Unlikely lads with stunning strike rate now targeting Grand National glory

It is a training partnership as unlikely as it is successful; Oliver Greenall, the scion of a brewing dynasty, and Josh Guerriero, son of a chef who came over to run an Italian restaurant in Penrith.

But forget Willie Mullins and Nicky Henderson for a moment, this Cheshire-based duo have a stunning 40 per cent strike-rate at the Cheltenham Festival – two winners from five runners – and, on Saturday, they are training their sights on the Grand National with their first runner and one of the big favourites, Iroko.

Iroko is just one of a handful of horses they train which is owned outright by one person, JP McManus, because if they have a unique selling point it is their in-house management of syndicates – 47 own 60 horses – which has helped the Malpas-based stable become one of the rising forces in jump racing.

Greenall, 38, would not argue with the fact that he had a privileged background but he has no airs and graces and has never been afraid to roll his sleeves up. His father, Lord Daresbury, was chairman of Aintree for a quarter of a century but Greenall spent his gap year at Mick Easterby’s university of life and when he felt he needed to fill a gap in his knowledge before launching on his training career, he spent a summer working as stable lad for Sir Mark Prescott.

By contrast Guerriero, 36, whose first language is Italian, spent the first 10 years of his life growing up outside Florence before his father returned to run Villa Bianca in Penrith. He had a riding lesson on a holiday in Italy, loved it, bought a horse which he “barely knew how to look after” but learnt as he went.

He got a Saturday job from school with Nicky Richards, spent eight years in the West Country with Philip Hobbs and Victor Dartnall and three with Dan Skelton all the time wondering how on earth he would ever get on the training ladder.

Meanwhile, Greenall, who had been champion amateur a couple of times, had gone to Stockton Hall Farm near Malpas to try to make a living from cattle which he juggled with training a few pointers.

“I was full-time farming, on my own, new to the area, we had two cold winters, the pipes were bursting, the barns were old, a cow slipped over in my first week, I was getting up at stupid o’clock to get the cows done before I trained my pointers and struggling to get the farm into the state I wanted. I got down, the only time I saw anyone was at market once a fortnight, and I soon learnt horses were more my thing.

“But I knew I couldn’t train all on my own – Mick instilled in me that you can’t do it all yourself. Josh had been three years at Dan Skelton’s and felt he would never be able to become a partner because it’s a family business. We had a meeting and he came on board as a partner in the business but not on the licence.

“The first year was a bit weird, I think the staff found it hard Josh coming in, we both tried to do everything but Josh is a strong personality and wasn’t going to change just for me and knew how he wanted to do things.

“But with horses someone has to have final say on certain things so Josh does entries, the declarations, trains the horses, runs the staff. I look after all syndicates, I go racing, I’m front of house, do owner events. We’re both playing to our strengths and between us doing what a single person couldn’t. The game changer was Josh coming on the licence because I was struggling with pretending I was doing everything.”

Neither man is unacquainted with Aintree. Guerriero won the Foxhunters over the big fences on a spare ride, Christy Beamish, while Greenall trained and rode Cool Friend to finish second in 2013. He was fourth when Guerriero won it.

Ironically because his parents were entertaining at the meeting, having young children there was a hindrance rather than a help, so Greenall did not go to his first National until 1997 – the bomb scare year – and the first one he saw live was Papillon in 2000.

The seven-year-old Iroko was sourced by Greenall for McManus. “Dad and some friends buy 10 foals a year off a French breeder,” he says. “They pick them, buy them, train them in France and the good ones they sell. They’d sold three quite good ones to JP.

“I saw AP [Sir Anthony McCoy, McManus’s adviser in Britain] and said jokingly it would be great to train one for JP. He said: ‘Well, actually you’re on the radar anyway.’ We left it at that but a couple of weeks later Iroko was second at Auteuil [to Intense Raffles who is also running in the National]. I sent AP a text. I said it might be worth a look and a week later they bought him.”

Having won the Martin Pipe at the Festival in 2023, Iroko has already paid his way. Last year he made an impressive start over fences and went straight to Cheltenham without another run before finishing second to the subsequent Gold Cup winner Inothewayurthinkin at Aintree. This year has been geared solely for the National.

“It was always in our minds but he needed to tick a few boxes which he has done,” points out Greenall. “It’s not a race you can run in as an afterthought and, apart from Ascot, where he got knocked over in a four-runner race, it’s all gone to plan.”

Aintree is only half an hour from the yard. “It’s hard to imagine what it would feel like to win it,” says Guerriero. “For young trainers like us it would do our profile a lot of good but we know how hard it is just to have a runner. We only have two horses in the yard rated high enough to get in the race.

“We might not get another chance like this for 10 years so we want to make it count. He’s got all the attributes, he’s a graded horse back in a handicap. I’d love it to go smoothly – if he’s not good enough or doesn’t stay that’s fine but we just don’t want a hard-luck story.” We all know, however, that in a National that is the biggest ask.