Borders racehorse trainer Paul Robson on move to Northumberland

The 41-year-old, currently based at Spittal-on-Rule, is taking over the South Hazelrigg yard at Chatton formerly occupied by Rose Dobbin at the end of this month.

Robson, a rider of 89 winners as a jumps jockey prior to having his racing career in the saddle ended in 2019 by a persistent shoulder injury.

That second retiral came almost a decade and a half after he first called it a day in 2005, taking charge of his family’s funeral directors’ business in Hawick in the interim and later, in 2019, taking over the trainer’s licence previously held by his father Adam for their yard near Denholm.

His best season as a jockey was 2002/03, notching up 29 winners over jumps and earning almost £224,300 in prize money.

Robson’s yard has produced 13 winners, the most productive being Just Don’t Know, an 11-year-old bay gelding owned by Lilliardsedge’s Border Caravans, and Cannock Park, a six-year-old bay co-owned by Robson and Colin Thomas.

Its most recent winner was another six-year-old bay gelding, Breizh River, also owned by Border Caravans, a first-placed finisher at Hexham in Northumberland last month, with Hawick’s Craig Nichol as jockey, and at Bangor-on-Dee in Wales on Saturday, with Henry Brooke riding.

Paul and wife Steph, plus their children Oliver and Heath, plan to make their 40-plus-mile move east to Hazelrigg at the end of June, with their horses also due to arrive at the yard in the last week of the month.

He expects to have around 30 horses in training, utilising facilities including an all-weather gallop, grass gallop, indoor gallop and swimming pool.

It looks likely that six horses trained by Dobbin will stay on, five of them winners over national hunt rules.

Graeme Nichol and Poppi Shepherd will move from Denholm to South Hazelrigg to oversee the yard’s staff, the former being the father of regular stable jockey Craig.

Robson hopes, once everything is in place at his new base the other side of the English border, to get a racing website up and running, plus a club offering punters a chance to buy shares in horses.

For further details, see Robson’s Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/PaulRobsonRacing/

“I am really looking forward to the move to South Hazelrigg,” said Robson.

“It has facilities to match any in racing and I hope to set up a young and vibrant yard, with, of course, hopefully winners following on.”