Michael Owen

Many footballers enjoy the thrills of following racing - but Michael Owen has taken that interest many stages further.The Manchester United striker has always been an avid follower of the sport, but back in 2007 he set up his own stables aimed at producing horses to compete with the elite in the country.

Now Manor House Stables is the home of one of horse racing’s most ambitious and high profile operations.Set in over 160 acres of Cheshire farmland, Owen and business partner Andrew Black oversee what has quickly become one of racing’s most respected projects for the future.

Top trainer Tom Dascombe was drafted in two years ago, bringing with him a team from his former yard in Lambourn which included assistant trainer Colin Gorman. And Gorman has revealed the plan of the training team, Owen and Betfair co-founder Black is to establish one of racing’s most prestigious, successful and ultimately profitable organisations. And Owen plays a hands-on role whenever he can away from his commitments at Old Trafford. Gorman said: “Michael is around the place quite a lot, he just enjoys the involvement and we all know this is a five year plan not a five month plan."

“This is something for the future, not for the present and he pops in before training or after he’s been in Manchester a couple of times a week. “He loves the involvement of being around the yard, seeing the horses and having a bit of fun with myself, Tom and the owners. He just loves horse racing, full stop. “Everybody’s enjoying the challenge really well and we’ve got some very exciting prospects here at Manor House."

“I moved here in August 2009 while Tom was still down in Lambourn and there were about fifty horses when I arrived. “There was quite a lot of old fodder that had to be moved on and we had to find out exactly what it was we had at the stable, so quite a lot of those horses didn’t stay here when Tom arrived. “We ended up with about ten or twelve useful types, ones that we thought would have prospects for the year ahead and then Tom brought about thirty of his own horses up North."

“They were all the horses he thought would be decent enough to hold their own and could be 70+ horses for the season ahead. “Once he arrived we went and bought about fifty, fifty-five yearlings to pass on to old clients, new clients and current ones, meaning that from the start we had about one-hundred horses on base. “That was great in a sense, but we were 75% top heavy on two-year-olds and unfortunately in the early part of the spring we weren’t the healthiest yard in the world."

“The horses weren’t 100% and it would be fair to say that it took us as a while to get things moving in full flow. We’d put a new gallop in which we started using in the middle of that March and we changed a lot of things around in a very short period of time. But now we have got to grips with everything and hopefully the horses will start running better from here on in.”

That has certainly been the case this season - so much so that Owen was left wiping away tears of joy when one of his horses Brown Panther triumphed at the King George V Stakes at Ascot this year. Owen said: “The problem with racing is you’ve got no control whatsoever. I don’t get nervous playing football because I can do something about it. Racing, you’re just in the lap of the Gods.”

Though he claimed no credit, there was a clear sense of achievement in having bred this horse from Treble Heights, a 12-year-old former racehorse that is now treated as a pet by his four children. “I don’t think anyone, unless you’ve actually done it, can believe the sort of feeling that you get out of it,” Owen said.