Mick Channon: from soccer to horse-racing
Mick Channon ended his 22-year soccer career in 1987. Now, at 61 years old, he has turned himself into a big name in an entirely different sport – horse racing.
“If you don’t have anything to get up for in the mornings, you might as well be dead,” said Channon at the end of his first career. “The tears, the highs, the lows — you miss it all.”
Professional athletes have made a career choice that forces early retirement and will leave them with a void. Channon has filled that void with the 200 horses saddled at his stables. More than half of his horses take at least one victory in an average season, but that hasn’t stopped the trainer from playing favourites.
Channon has said that Youmzain is the “most genuine” thoroughbred stallion he’s worked with.
“He doesn’t think he’s 7 years old, I can tell you that,” described the trainer. “It’s a question of whether the body can do what the brain tells it, but he’s one horse that never lets us down.”
Youmzain finished Saturday’s King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes in third place, and has finished second-place three times in the prestigious Arc de Triomphe, and Channon hasn’t crossed out the possibility of the horse beating his record in that race, which is being held this autumn.
“Longchamp in the autumn,” Channon said on his Web site, “is a long way from Ascot, Epsom or the Curragh in midsummer and Youmzain is an incredibly popular horse in France for three very good reasons. We’ll go straight there now for what could be his final public appearance.”
Channon is the same life-lusting countryman as he was during his soccer career, when he was a seasoned athlete with long black hair, though he has understandably slowed his pace in the meantime. With age catching up to him and a car crash having nearly killed him in 2008, his passion for horse-training might be just what is keeping him alive.
“There’s nothing complicated about horses. A lot of it is common sense and working hard at the basics — horse care, feeding and general discipline throughout your stable,” said Channon, explaining his choice of second career.
As a soccer player, the Englishman made no secret of his distaste for the demanding practice regiment, so it comes as some surprise that he is now responsible for that very thing, albeit with horses rather than men. He compared the training of horses to the management of a soccer team, explaining the main difference as the fact that horses don’t talk back.
“What pleases me most is that at the end of the day, the buck stops with me,” said Channon. “In soccer, a manager still has to be responsible to directors.”
The trainer began his second career with 10 animals, with support from some of his fellow players and interested businessmen. Channon has always had the advantage of working harder the more elusive the victory seemed, because he knows that skill is nothing without discipline and spirit.
Now suffering from arthritis despite never suffering major injury in his long soccer career, which began at the Southampton club near to his hometown, he knows that his job is to be dedicated the horses in his care. He spent many years in Southampton, long after having proven that he was an international competitor, for its closeness to home.
Now his stables are even closer to his hometown. There is something about the effort of connecting to the equine mind that keeps him getting out of bed in the morning.
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