Tom Coulthwaite (1861-1948) was one of the top National Hunt trainers in the first thirty years of the twentieth century. Possibly the very top. He won three Grand Nationals when they dominated the whole season; three National Hunt Chases in the pre-Gold Cup era when it was one of the premier chases behind the National.
Born near Manchester, his early working life was as a butcher and a clerk, but in his leisure hours he was an athlete and played rugby. He then moved on to training athletes, and in due course realised that some of the techniques applied to humans could equally well be applied to horses. Martin Pipe did the same thing at the beginning of his career.
Coulthwaite started training on the old Manchester racecourse at New Barns in the 1890s but before long he moved to Staffordshire. Nevertheless, he was a Lancastrian through and through and mopped up all the big races at Aintree and Manchester (a major northwestern course until its closure in 1963). He won eight of the twelve races at a two-day Manchester meeting in 1905.
He designed a special horsebox for Eremon, who had breathing problems, who went on to win the 1907 National. Jenkinstown won it in 1910 but three years later Coulthwaite’s licence was withdrawn owing to in-and-out running of some of his horses, about which he had been warned before. Why such an astute trainer should fail to heed the initial stern warning is strange. Nevertheless, many thought he was harshly treated, even more so when his licence wasn’t reinstated until 1920.
He was soon back in the groove, his winningmost season (with 59) coming in 1922/23. His Grakle won the 1931 National at the fifth attempt. Coulthwaite then began to wind down his operation but carried on until 1939, when he won the Liverpool Hurdle for the tenth time. Overall he trained between 800 and 1,000 winners.
These days Steph Hollinshead, granddaughter of Reg, trains her horses on what used to be Coulthwaite’s gallops near Rugeley.
The Tom Coulthwaite Handicap Chase over 3m4f was inaugurated at Haydock – even though Manchester or Aintree would have been more suitable courses to honour him – in January 1949. It was last run in 1972, by which time it was down to 3m but still a National trial, packed with horses destined to run in that year’s race.
Much of this information was gleaned from Paul Davies’s Lancashire Chase edition of his The Complete Record series. There’s much more to this story than I can relate here.
Hednesford’s Horse Racing History (Anthony Hunt & John Griffiths)
Another source (not yet consulted) is Staffordshire Studies – Volume 3 (1990-91): Man of the Turf: Tom Coulthwaite of Cannock Chase – by John Godwin