‘I ditched my career to travel around the US for years with just one racehorse - now I’m back and in charge of the Derby’
Jim Allen tells Jonathan Harding about the epic journey that led to his return home to Epsom
You would be hard pressed to name a role in racing at which Jim Allen has not tried his hand.
He climbed the ranks of British racecourse administration to become a top executive, juggled that day job with sending out the odd runner as a trainer, then ditched it all to set up a full-time training operation in the US, where he moved between cheap motels and racecourses with a Godolphin cast-off he bought for just £3,000, and even tried his hand in France when his US visa expired.
The 52-year-old has now come full circle as general manager of Epsom, where on Saturday he will oversee his first Derby in the town where as a racing-mad teenager he used to ride work and started down the path of a life in racing.
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