Based at Aramstone House in the village of Kings Caple, Herefordshire, in the West Midlands of England, Venetia Williams first took out a training licence, in her own right, in 1995, having previously understudied the likes of Martin Pipe and John Edwards, among others. As an amateur rider, it was be fair to say that she was not exactly blessed by good fortune. She was knocked unconscious when her mount, Marcolo, fell at Becher’s Brook in the 1989 Grand National and, on her first ride back, suffered a potentially fatal ‘hangman’s fracture’ to her second cervical vertebra in a novice hurdle at Worcester, which resulted in her retirement from the saddle.
However, since turning her hand to training, Williams, 63, has proved a model of consistency, saddling 50 winners or more in 18 of her 29 seasons, so far, with a career-best total of 90 winners, which she achieved in 2012/13. Of course, she also famously won the Grand National with 100/1 outsider Mon Mome in 2009, making her just the second female trainer – after the pioneering Jenny Pitman – to do so, but she has proved, over and over again, that she is no one-trick pony.
Venetia Williams is, in fact, the most successful female trainer in the history of National Hunt racing and, in 2023/24 so far, has been at least as prosperous as ever, if not more so. At the time of writing, since the official start of the National Hunt season, on May 1, 2023, she has saddled 27 winners from 102 runners, at a healthy strike rate of 27%, and amassed nearly £650,000 in prize money. She has also proved ‘punter friendly’, insofar as she is showing a level stakes profit of nearly £44.