Nigel Twiston-Davies
Nigel Twiston-Davies was born in May 1957 and rode as an amateur for six years for trainers which included Fred Winter, Kim Bailey, Richard Head and Fred Rimell. In 1981 he moved to the Cotswolds to begin his training, and in 1982 had his first winner with Last of the Foxes in 1982 at Hereford Racecourse – it was an even bigger feat when you consider that he also rode Last of the Foxes in the race!
That was just the beginning for Twiston-Davies, who took out his full licence in 1989 with his first winner, Babil, on 30th December of the same year. Since then he has trained over 1000 winners of a diverse range of races including a number of national hunt racing’s most important festivals and races – the Grand National, the Welsh National, the Cheltenham Festival, the Hennessey Gold Cup, the Sussex National and the Becher Chase.
The only current trainer to have won the Grand National more than once and all five races over the national fences races at Aintree
Nigel’s stables are at Grange Hill Farm, Naunton in Gloucestershire. It has a four furlong all weather uphill gallop with extensive schooling fences, an out door school swimming pool, grass gallops and two horse walkers. His training partner is Carl Llewellyn, with whom he has shared many victories over the 22 years that they had been working together as trainer/jockey.
The definitive moment of Twiston-Davies’ career came in 1998 when he won the Grand National for the first time with Earth Summit, and the next big moment came in 2002 when he won it again with Bindaree.
2010 ended his previously moderate success at the Cheltenham Festival, when Imperial Commander won the Cheltenham Gold Cup and immediately after that his son, Sam Twiston-Davies went out and won the Cheltenham Foxhunters 2010 on Baby Run.
Nigel Twiston-Davies has sent out 45 Grand National runners since 1994 and in 2012 ran Viking Blond who finished 7th and Hello Bud who finished in 14th place. Hello Bud subsequently went on to win the Becher Handicap Chase at Aintree on December 8th 2012, despite being 14 years old and following this epic win the legend was retired.
In 2013 Nigel Twiston-Davies saddled three runners – Imperial Commander, Major Malarkey and Viking Blond with Major Malarkey finishing in 11th place and did not have any starters in the 2014 renewal.
