‘The hardest two years of my life’: meet the polo-playing Army officer turned National Hunt trainer with a hunger to succeed

Thirty-four-year-old National Hunt trainer Billy Aprahamian is a man on a mission.

“We’ve got 18 in training this year – I’d love to have 22 next year and keep the horses running consistently with some winners,” says Billy, who is based in the picturesque village of Adstone, in Northamptonshire.

Since setting up shop as a trainer in 2022, Billy has sent out 11 winners – seven of those since the start of this season in April, with his career ever gaining momentum. And it was his youth that set him onto a life completely immersed in horses.

“My family has always been horsey. I was terrified of my first pony, but as I got older, my horses became increasingly wild and I became braver. I think, like any young boy, something needs to be a bit more exciting than just ‘ponies’ and I got introduced to polo when I was about 10 years old. That grew and grew and took hold of my family and by about the age of 16, I was playing semi-professionally,” says Billy, whose best handicap was two. “I finished school at 18 and played full-time for three years in some good high level matches, but came to the conclusion when I was 21 that it wasn’t going to be what I was going to do for the rest of my life, because I just wasn’t good enough.

“At 21, I gave up the polo and didn’t really know where I was going – I had always been a follower of National Hunt and loved jump racing and a couple of years after that, I thought I’d get a pointer and give point-to-pointing a crack. I bought a horse called Endofdiscussion from Paul Webber and we won our first race and from there, I was hooked. At that point in time, I didn’t think training racehorses was going to be a job, I just loved the sport and wanted to ride as much as possible.”

Billy’s next move was to join the Army.

“That was an itch I always wanted to scratch,” he confesses. “I think the idea of the Army is brilliant – it’s a great grounding for any man or woman who wants to go on and further themselves in any career, whether you’re in service for three years, five years, or 50 years.

“I was 24 and I thought ‘let’s go and charge around with guns for a bit and life will work itself out’.”

During his time in the Army, Billy went all over the world, spending time in the jungle in Belize and Thailand, as well as being based in France, Kenya, Germany and throughout the UK.

“I started off as a Rifle Platoon Commander, then Machine Gun Platoon Commander and finished off at Catterick at the Infantry Training Centre as the adjutant in the 2nd Battalion, which, at that stage of your career, you start to become more office-bound, and at that point I knew I was done – I’d had the fun part of leading a platoon in the Irish Guards.”

Billy says that by that point, he’d got the idea of moving into a career of training racehorses into his head.

“But I had no idea how I was going to go about it – how on Earth do you go from being in the Army to setting up a training yard? You can’t just go from one to the other – you need to go and be an assistant trainer somewhere.”

He tried to gain experience in as many yards as possible, including spending some time with Harry Whittington.

“I spoke to Harry a lot about wanting to train racehorses and he said that if I could get ‘down there’, that would be the best place to go, while he was pointing straight down the hill in the direction of Nicky Henderson’s Seven Barrow’s yard,” explains Billy.

“So I emailed Mr Henderson and asked if I could go in and ride out, and at the time, was hoping to ride in the Grand Military race at Sandown, if they had a horse that was suitable.”

Mr Henderson responded to say Billy, who was still in the Army at this point, could go into Seven Barrows and ride out.

“I went into Mr Henderson’s as many mornings each week as I could while I was based an hour away at Hounslow. A horse called Baden became available for me to ride in the Grand Military and Mr Henderson and the horse’s owner Major Hanbury very kindly gave me the ride and we won. From there, it sparked a conversation between Mr Henderson and I and he asked me what I wanted to do after the Army. I replied ‘I want to come and be your assistant!’ to which he replied he might have a job for me.”

Billy left the Army and joined Seven Barrows with the idea he wanted to train. He pinpoints riding Santini, who won almost £500,000 in prize money during his career, as his favourite horse who he rode every day while working for Mr Henderson.

“He was such a monkey and he would clown around; bucking, farting, jumping, which Mr Henderson loved to see,” smiles Billy. “He was so slow at home and we couldn’t find a horse slow enough to work with him, but you’d put him on the track and he would gallop forever. The best day was when he won the Cotswold Chase at Cheltenham in 2020, which he won really well, beating Bristol De Mai and then he went on to just get pipped in the Gold Cup at Cheltenham [where he was beaten by a neck by Al Boum Photo] a couple of months later.”

What prompted Billy to make the daunting jump from working as Mr Henderson’s assistant to setting up shop on his own?

“I had a half-mile wood chip gallop at home in Northamptonshire and eight stables, but that was it,” he states. “But while I was working at Seven Barrows, my now wife, Helena, and I had our first child, Ophelia, and I think that brought the move for me to train forward a bit – Helena is a small animal vet and her practice is in this area and the plan was always for us to come home, so it seemed like a good time to make the move.

“When I started out as a trainer, I had two pointers, and we went to the sales and bought a couple of stores [unbroken three-year-olds] and a couple of horses in training, so we started out with five or six.”

Billy’s first winner as a National Hunt trainer came with Conceal in October 2022, not long after taking out his licence.

“Oh my God, that was such a good day,” says Billy of training his first winner. “He was my fourth runner out the door and a 50/1 shot. I thought he was in good health and I’d ridden him in point-to-points and I always thought he just didn’t quite stay the three miles. So I put him in a 2½ mile race around the galloping track at Uttoxeter and I said to James [Bowen, jockey], ‘just lob away’ and he won by a nose.”

By his own admission, it took Billy a long time to secure another winner – eight months.

“That was something I hadn’t previously comprehended, having been at Seven Barrows. I hadn’t appreciated how hard it is to go from nothing to being established. I questioned absolutely everything in the time it took between training our first and second winner, but you have to stick with your system and not change anything, because if you start changing everything left, right and centre, you can’t find the continuity.

“It takes so much time, but when you get down to the nitty gritty of it, those early horses I had were either running off too high a [handicap] mark or they just weren’t really racehorses.

“It’s been ****ing hard to get going – I’ve definitely had the hardest two years of my life, with a young family and trying to get the ball rolling; it was agonising – I would almost rather gone back to [Army training at] Sandhurst than to go through that all over again. But you put your head down and drive on and there is light at the end of the tunnel.”

Billy is feeling more confident now, though, and the results this season show why – over 50% of his runners have either won or been placed.

“I feel like we’re sort of there now, and hopefully we can cement a nice bit of form from start to finish throughout the season, with the horses running consistently. Now our facilities are all in place and we’ve got some better bloodstock, we can prove that training successful racehorses is something we can do.”

His quest for glory was given a further boost at the start of this season when former National Hunt trainer Paul Webber, who was a neighbour to Billy’s yard, announced his retirement.

“Paul is a good family friend and when I knew he was retiring, I approached him to ask him about the future and we agreed he would come on as my assistant and bring some of his horses and their owners with him and it’s all worked well from there. He has brought over some fantastic owners, which pretty much doubled my string. I think without the amalgamation of mine and Paul’s yard, it would have been an incredibly tough year, but we suddenly went from eight running horses to 18 running horses,” explains Billy.

“Paul’s was the first yard I rode out at. We stand on the gallops now laughing about the boll*ckings he used to give me when I was a teenager! Having him on board is brilliant and the experience he brings is a great help, especially in terms of settling me and helping me to believe what I’m doing is ok. Training is tough and you have to be so realistic about everything.”

When asked to pinpoint his career highlight so far, Billy can’t pick one specific winner or moment.

“There was a shift in momentum at the beginning of this season in May – the horses were running well at the end of last season and we were getting there – and then they just kept running well and I felt like we were working it out. That would be my career highlight so far,” he states, keen to give credit to the team he has around him, including head girl, Cara Spencer. “She’s terrific – organised, wise beyond her years and a proper grafter.”

And what about plans moving forwards?

“When I originally set up here following my time at Mr Henderson’s I thought I wanted to have 60, 80, 100 horses in training, but now I really want to focus on quality.

“I’d love to have some horses in some big Saturday races with live chances – that would be amazing.”

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