Too Many Diamonds: a story of glory, betrayal, sickness and health

Racing can be a cutthroat game at times. Few achieve success in the sport without ruffling a few feathers along the way - all's fair in love, war and racing, to coin a phrase. This was a lesson learned the hard way by Clare Ellam, former trainer of Too Many Diamonds, over the last couple of months.

If you have somehow missed the news, Too Many Diamonds won four races in the span of eight days recently, a remarkable training and placing performance by his current trainer Dan Skelton. But there's more to this story than first meets the eye.

Too Many Diamonds had a record of zero wins from 41 starts when he arrived at Skelton's in April, a miserable record largely attributed to sickness and injury. Ellam twice nursed him back to health: first when he joined the yard from Ireland – "it took us a long time to nurture him to health," Ellam said this week – and then again when he strained knee ligaments and spent half a year off the track. Yet Ellam knew there was talent in there. She persevered, patiently.