Racing: Nicholls sees more than the family business

The trainer of the favourite for this afternoon's big race at Cheltenham does not come from a racing background, but he has already taken high rank in his profession and his future holds the promise of success in chasing's greatest prize.

Paul Nicholls has been instructing jockeys this week, but, by lineage, he should really have been kicking down their doors and dragging them out of bed at daybreak.

The former jockey and wunderkind of the training ranks was indeed born to be Nicholls of the yard, but it should have been more Scotland than racehorse. Both his father and grandfather were bobbies. The genes never forgot this and Nicholls's riding career was a guerilla conflict with his weight. By the end, he was happy to surrender. "When I broke my leg in 1989 it was almost a relief," he says. "I was riding Topsham Bay at work when another horse in the string kicked me. I remember lying in the road waiting for the ambulance to arrive thinking `Christ this is great, I'll be able to have something to eat tonight'. That's how bad it had got."

Nicholls's riding career, however, had only ever been a prelude to life as a trainer. Six years after being granted a licence, the 35-year-old has established himself as the coming man of National Hunt racing. He finally arrived at Kempton on Boxing Day when See More Business collected the King George VI Chase. "I don't feel under any pressure at all now," he says apropos of nothing in the middle of a conversation. He must have been feeling it dreadfully before Kempton.

See More Business runs again at Cheltenham today on the way to the Gold Cup, as long as he gets the soft ground he requires, and seeks to convince a sceptical audience that the Boxing Day victory was not a gift from his rivals. "If you read the papers, he won the King George when everything else was in its wheelchair, dead or dying," Nicholls says. "Everyone was knocking the form so much I was expecting the handicapper to drop him, not put him up."

Home now for Bristol-born Nicholls is in the Somerset village of Ditcheat, where his Manor Farm stables are rented from Paul Barber, See More Business's part-owner. Barber has six dairy herds which he grazes on his own pasture which others refer to as the Blackmore Vale. Their milk goes into the dominating factory in Ditcheat. Paul Barber is, if such a thing exists, a cheese magnate.

Back at Nicholls's place there seem to be dogs everywhere, as if animal- rights protesters had loosened the lock on a beagles' smoking room. Inside the main building it's the traditional trainers' fixtures and fittings: Welsh dressers, winning photographs and bits of porcelain you only see elsewhere in advertising pages of Sunday newspaper magazines.

Physically, Paul Nicholls remains the man he became soon after his race- riding career terminated. "Within two weeks of being in hospital after my accident I put on a stone and a half, just by going from starving to eating what I wanted," he says. "Now I can eat what I want."

Nicholls won big races from the saddle in his time - two Hennessys, an Irish Gold Cup and a Welsh National - but he would pass out if you suggested he was a better rider than trainer. "I wasn't very good," he says. "I suppose I was adequate. I was quite tall for a jockey so riding over fences suited me and I was lucky enough to ride Broadheath and Playschool. I rode some nice winners and enjoyed it when I was going well, but I wouldn't have had myself here as stable jockey."

It is his success on steeplechasers that has shaped Nicholls's training strategy. Perhaps the only hurdlers he shows an interest in are David Hemery and Colin Jackson. In general, he likes to work with enormous, raw-boned beasts and he has a strategy for getting them to the track knowing their job.

Many young horses conscripted to Manor Farm miss out the established curriculum of bumpers and novice hurdles and go instead to Dorset and the point-to-pointing yard of Richard Barber [Paul's brother]. They return as hardened jumping animals wholly prepared for tackling fences under Rules. "They know what they're doing when they get back and go straight to novice chasing," Nicholls says.

It seems to be working. Nicholls stands third in the trainers' championship with 43 winners, at a level-stake profit of over pounds 25. He has sent out the winners of 38 chases, more than any other trainer in the country.

From his starting point with a dirty dozen horses of varying abilities, Nicholls has expanded his yard to 60. The window sign announcing vacancies can be seen only from the inside, though the trainer is prepared to put himself out if a richly talented fencer is looking for a home. "I'd love to train 60 decent chasers," he says. "Fitness comes into it then so much more than over hurdles. You're never going to be champion trainer while Pipe's about and Nicholson has got all those horses, but there are good races to be won.

"Sixty is enough for us because Bridget [Mrs Nicholls] and I are really hands on. We can keep our finger on the pulse but any more and things might start getting out of control. Some trainers do really well when they've got 40 or 50, but then they double the string and the whole thing drops off."

If there is one thing which mobilises Nicholls it is his constant cheeriness and optimism. It is not a characteristic that is appreciated by all in racing. It perhaps exemplifies the social differences between here and America that British turf aficionados appreciate more the attitude of men like Jim Old and Tim Forster, who permanently expect the MIR satellite station to drop on their heads while supervising morning work.

Nicholls is not like that, even if he has tempered the adolescent excitement he used to carry into each Cheltenham Festival. "I've learned now that you can't let your heart rule your head at Cheltenham," he says. "You've go to go there with a realistic chance otherwise you might as well stay at home. I've got the most consistent record in all England at the Festival. Mine consistently get stuffed."

It is a record that Nicholls is planning to arrest, which should be easy enough. That's in his blood.