Grand National winning-trainer Oliver Sherwood has vowed to start afresh next season after getting the all-clear from cancer.
The 67-year-old told how he had been battling ill health on his return to Cheltenham earlier this month. Sherwood, who has sent out more than 1,300 winners in his career, was delighted to see Queens Gamble make an impressive debut in the mares' bumper.
It was the first time he had been to the prestigious Gloucestershire track since its October 2021 meeting, as he was diagnosed with lymphoma in the same month. Sherwood revealed in a blog post recapping the recent National Hunt season how he had recently been given the good news by doctors.
"I’m very upbeat about getting back to training winners again and putting this difficult season behind me," he said. "Positivity all the way and I’m always on the lookout for more horses and owners. The reason for writing this personal account is to give hope to anyone that is going through what I have now thankfully beaten, I was given the all clear last week having been diagnosed with stage 4 lymphoma in October last year………..never give up."
Sherwood, who won the 2015 Grand National at Aintree with Many Clouds, has trained racehorses for nearly 40 years. Until the latest campaign, which ended at Sandown on Saturday, he had been based at Rhonehurst stables. After owners Jim and Claire Bryce purchased the Lambourn facility, Warren Greatrex moved in and Sherwood relocated to Neardown Stables in the village.
Sherwood began six months of chemotherapy in November. "Thankfully the whole process is so much kinder now and it is constantly improving/evolving," he added. "It has left me full of admiration for the doctors and particularly the nurses that became very much a part of my life, what they see and deal with on a daily basis makes all of our problems seem very insignificant.
"I never stopped going to the yard during my entire treatment so when the horses began to run disappointingly in the new year it was a head scratcher, nothing had changed and we were not doing anything differently yet they were clearly not right.
"In a perfect world the horses would have given me a lift during this time, unfortunately it was the opposite."
Thanking all of his supporters, the six-time-winning trainer at the Cheltenham Festival now has his sights set on next season. He hopes to improve on the yard's 13 winners from 2021-22, a tally which included another newcomer Sonification's triumph as it drew to a close.
