Harry Whittington, who is based at Hill Barn Stables in Sparsholt Firs, near Wantage, Oxfordshire, overlooking Lambourn, first took out a training licence in 2012. He enjoyed his most successful season, numerically and fiscally, in 2019/20, when he trained 30 winners from 160 runners, at a strike rate of 19%, and amassed over £450,000 in prize money. His biggest payday that season came on March 12, 2020, at the Cheltenham Festival, when Simply The Betts, ridden by Gavin Sheehan, justified favouritism in the Grade 3 Brown Advisory & Merriebelle Stable Plate, worth nearly £62,000 to winning connections.
By that stage of his career, Whittington had long since saddled his one and only Grade 1 winner, Arzal, in the Manifesto Novices’ Chase at Aintree on April 7, 2016. Tragically, Arzal was put down shortly afterwards due to complications arising from a minor leg injury, but the form was franked by the second and third horses, L’Ami Serge and Sizing John, who won the Grande Course de Haies d’Auteuil and the Cheltenham Gold Cup the following year!
In March, 2023, Whittington announced that he would be reliquishing his training licence at the end of the 2022/23 National Hunt season, in favour of a return breaking-in and pre-training young horses, something he had done successfully for the likes of Nicky Henderson and Tom Dascombe before turning his hand to training. He told the Racing Post, ‘I have always loved pre-training horses. It’s something I get a real kick out of, and it was something we have always considered doing again.’ Whittington duly saddled his final runner, Docpickedme, who was pulled up, in a handicap hurdle at Warwick on April 27, 2023. All told, he trained over 180 winners, including a handful on the Flat, which was a fair return for someone who once told ‘Trainer’ magazine, ‘I actually had no aspirations to be a trainer whatsoever.’