How did you get into racehorse ownership?

Horses are in my genes. I grew up surrounded by them. My mother Sarah Katherine Beckwith-Smith was Joint-Master of the Craven Hounds, my father rode in point-to-points and riding and racing were huge parts of my childhood.

My father Johnny Henderson had horses on the flat with Peter Walwyn at Seven Barrows in Lambourn where my brother Nicky now trains and my mother had a good horse Roaming Star, trained by Rosie Lomax at Baydon.

I have been going racing since I was a child. Newbury was our local track and I still love going there now.

The first horse I had in training I shared with my father. Called Mighty Strong, he was trained by Nicky and ridden by Mick Fitzgerald and amazingly he won three times at Newbury including in the week before my father died in 2003.

After my father’s death, Mighty Strong never ran another good race, he seemed to lose the will to win and he was reluctantly sold to go point-to-pointing.

In 2005, Nicky found me a French horse called Chouxdamour. He started favourite and finished last every time he ran! He went on to win in the show ring ridden by Katie Dashwood. He was a good looker but racing was not for him.

It was over Easter 2014 that Patrick Harty, working as Nicky’s assistant, took my husband Johnny and me out to see Might Bite who had just arrived at Seven Barrows from Ireland. We were one of 10 lucky people who bought a share in him and formed the Knot Again Partnership and what fun we had. Might Bite gave us many wonderful days racing; his first win coming at Newbury in March 2015.

What was your best day at the races and why?

The two very best days were at the Cheltenham Festival. First in 2017 when in a memorable race Might Bite won the RSA by a whisker from Whisper. Having led by a mile jumping the last he decided, as Nicky said, to stop and have an ice cream on the way to the winning post. It was only thanks to a loose horse coming alongside him and Nico de Boinville’s urgings that he galloped on again to win.

Battle

Then in 2018 in the Gold Cup when I thought jumping the last he might win, after a fierce battle up the hill Native River took the Cup. The race was front page news in The Times the next day which no doubt Might Bite would have appreciated as he was exceptionally intelligent but he knew he had been beaten.

He went on to win the Betway Bowl that year at Aintree but after that he never really enjoyed racing again and he retired in 2021 to the hunting field.

It was during lockdown last year that doing some family history I discovered that my maternal great-grandmother Georgina Moore was Irish. She grew up at Shannon Grove near Clonfert in Co Galway. At the age of 24 in February 1885 she married the legendary master of the Galway Blazers, Burton Robert Parsons Persse of Moyode Castle. He was then 56 and had 11 children from his first wife who had recently died.

In May 1885, less than three months after their marriage, Burton Persse was killed when his horse reared up. Georgina aged 24 was a widow with 11 step-children, a castle and a pack of hounds.

Four years later, in 1889, she married my great-grandfather Beckwith Beckwith-Smith at St Paul’s Church in Knightsbridge, London. The intervening four years are currently a mystery but it is possible that it was through hunting or racing that Georgina met my great-grandfather.

The Moore family were involved in racing, Garrett Moore a cousin of Georgina’s, won the Grand National in 1878 on his horse The Liberator having, it appears, grown up at the wonderfully named Jockey Hall, Curragh, Kildare.

How did you choose your trainer?

Curiosity about my great-grandmother and her life in Galway gave me the idea to have a horse in training in Ireland. It would give me the excuse to go to Ireland and get to know the people and places that had shaped my great-grandmother’s early life.

Having known Eddie Harty for many years through his friendship with Nicky, he and Patrick were the obvious choice as trainer. I asked them to speak to Barry Geraghty, (who I knew from his days riding for Nicky) to see if he could find a Bob’s Worth or a Might Bite for Eddie and Patrick to train at Mulgrave Lodge on the edge of the Curragh. Not a small ask!

The phone call came in December last year that Barry had found a horse, Grandero Bello, and was going to ride him out. With the okay from Barry we bought him in an online auction through Thoroughbid.com the following day.

My partner in Grandero Bello is Robert Caddick. Together we also have shares in two horses trained by Nicky, Morning Vicar and Firestep who have both won for us. Firestep won two bumpers last season but is currently on the sidelines with a tendon injury. Morning Vicar has the Topham at Aintree as his target in April.

Long stride

Robert and I flew to Ireland in January to see Grandero Bello for the first time: a tall, lightly built horse with a fine head, a gentle nature and a long stride. Neither of us had ever been to the Curragh so watching the Harty horses approach us across the vast open space with the stands in the background was a memorable moment.

Which Irish tracks do you know?

I had only been racing once before in Ireland and that was at Punchestown during the festival so I was excited at the prospect of another visit to that great course.

I had little expectation of Grandero Bello winning on his first run, I just wanted to see him jump well and enjoy it. (Hollywoodbets Now Streaming UK & Irish Racing Maiden Hurdle, February 13th 2022)

On the final bend I turned to Eddie Harty in disbelief and said, ‘can he win?’ There were a few moments of anxiety after the last hurdle but he ran on well to win by three-quarters of a length from Lucky Tenner. Ricky Doyle had ridden a great race.

My first runner at Punchestown a winner, I could hardly believe it! Unfortunately Robert could not be there to share the celebrations but my husband Johnny was with me.

What significance do your colours hold?

For Grandero Bello, Robert and I have new colours, royal blue with a white diamond, royal blue and white diamond sleeves and a royal blue hat.

The white diamond was a feature of my mother’s colours and I wanted her colours to be part of our new ones. That way there is a little bit of the Beckwith-Smith family included in this new adventure. I love the idea of extending my family’s involvement with racing into Ireland.

My father Johnny is remembered for his role in saving Cheltenham Racecourse in the 1960s, my uncle Peter Beckwith-Smith owned Lingfield Racecourse and was clerk of the course at Sandown and Epsom. I don’t know what he knew of his grandmother Georgina Beckwith-Smith’s early life in Galway but I’m sure he and my father would both approve of my purchase of Grandero Bello and would have been cheering him on at Punchestown, as indeed was my brother Nicky!

Josie Reed was in conversation with

Olivia Hamilton