InterviewJonny Portman
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'Every day I wonder why I'm doing it, with owners not paying and all the ghastly things - so you have to enjoy it when it goes well'

Jonny Portman tells Stuart Riley how three decades of struggle still hasn't quelled a burning ambition

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Deputy news editor
Jonny Portman at Whitcoombe House Stables in Upper Lambourn
Jonny Portman at Whitcoombe House Stables in Upper LambournCredit: Edward Whitaker

Jonny Portman’s training career was predestined in a sense – “I was either going to be a farmer or a trainer, nothing else really got a look in," he says – yet it came mighty close to never being realised.

Not because the grandson of the celebrated Derrick Candy and nephew of Classic winner Henry Candy lacked the ambition or doubted himself. Instead, it was for a rather more literal reason.

This scorcher of a day at his Whitcoombe House Stables in Upper Lambourn marks exactly 34 years since Portman was in a car crash that could have claimed his life.

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