Turf topics: Calgary Bay can make sure Knight enjoys more days in the spotlight

"Patience," she says on her mobile phone while overseeing a jumping tutorial for a couple of the more recent inmates at her yard which houses Calgary Bay, top weight for today's Sky Bet Chase at Doncaster.

She should know. A decade ago, she was slowly preparing a young colt for his first look at larger obstacles. He was Best Mate, the first horse since Arkle to win three successive Cheltenham Gold Cups.

Together with her husband Terry Biddlecombe, the former champion jockey, she also masterminded the career of Edredon Bleu – a Champion Chase hero and King George VI hero.

This eccentric couple were household names but, after Best Mate's untimely death, and the retirement of the equally heroic Edredon Bleu, they have drifted down the trainers' league table.

They no longer have the quantity of horses that they did; just over 100 winners in the past five seasons is, at face value, a modest return.

Yet, in Calgary Bay and the top novice Somersby, who swerves Doncaster today for a jumping lesson at Hereford tomorrow, they have two star pupils to relish.

"Top horses don't come along that often," says Knight from her enchanting Oxfordshire stables where the ducks on the pond are looked after with as much care as her horses.

"We've been lucky – but, yes, you always want more. Who doesn't? It is hard to get the top but it is very easy to slip all the way back down to the bottom.

"People don't want to wait long for their horses. They want to run them. But, sometimes, it can be the worst thing. If you're going to make a chaser, you don't rush them."

Knight's wisdom used to be frequently questioned when she ran Best Mate as little as three times a season despite his huge public following.

Yet it was, she says, in "Matey's best interests".

Likewise Paul Nicholls runs Kauto Star and Denman, his worthy successors to Knight's champion, three times a year – and without much of the unfair criticism that she faced from 'armchair trainers'. Her methods are becoming, albeit slowly, accepted practice.

She is slightly unsure of the ultimate target for Calgary Bay and Somersby. This weekend, a crucial staging post in the countdown to the Cheltenham National Hunt Festival, will be pivotal.

She describes Calgary Bay as "a giant" and believes he could ultimately be Grand National material.

First, he has to pass his Sky Bet test. "I don't think a top weight has ever won this race – or when it was the Great Yorkshire. If so, not many have done so.

"He's got a lot of weight, but he's better going left-handed and he likes the track. He was second at Doncaster in his first race over fences and then won last time out under AP McCoy.

"I'm very happy with him – my worry is that there might just be one near the bottom of the handicap who proves too good. We'll see."

Knight, 63, does not employ a stable jockey but simply uses the best available. Her more regular riders include Ferdy Murphy's stable jockey Graham Lee. "A lovely horseman," she says.

Guiseley-born Dominic Elsworth, another favourite, is currently sidelined with a long-term concussion injury.

The Yorkshireman was in the saddle when Somersby came to prominence last year by finishing third to Go Native, a leading Champion Hurdle contender, in the Supreme Novices Hurdle at Cheltenham.

The only reason Somersby is swerving Doncaster for the Welsh borders tomorrow, she says, is McCoy's availability.

If he wins, he will take his place in the Arkle Trophy at Cheltenham – a race that was denied to Best Mate because of the 2001 foot-and-mouth epidemic which saw the Festival cancelled.

The winner of the Henry VIII Chase at Sandown, and with the same owners as Calgary Bay, Knight clearly thinks highly of the horse that offers her best route back to top of the class.

"Somersby often doesn't eat after his races – he's highly strung – but he made an instant impression when we first saw him," says Knight who, with typical impishness, has been known to ask some journalists recently if they remember her.

"It was through the Costello family, who found us Best Mate. But, unlike 'Matey' who we saw point-to-point, this one we saw in the raw – he hadn't even been named. We saw him jumping plastic hurdles and Terry said, 'he will do'.

"I think he is a very good horse. He goes around on his own, Best Mate liked company, but it doesn't matter – he's so much better than others.

"He has great speed. He's a two-miler at present, but I see him becoming a three-mile chaser. A Gold Cup horse? I'm hopeful but one setback is all it takes to put paid to plans."

The biggest problem, says Knight, is the dearth of suitable novice chasers – and she hopes the British Horseracing Authority is taking note.

They are reluctant to stage such races because they attract small fields – and they are not good for betting turnover.

Yet the intermediate races, the next stage up, can be dominated by 'hotpots' from the all-conquering Paul Nicholls and Nicky Henderson yards.

It does nothing, she says, to introduce a horse gradually to the larger obstacles. "The Gold Cup is the pinnacle," says Knight. "That's what we're in this game for."

Famously superstitious, she never actually saw Best Mate gallop into immortality up the gruelling Cheltenham hill.

Having won in 2002, she kept to the same routine in the countdown to Cheltenham. Nothing could change, right down to the wearing of her elegant brooch.

It also meant sharing her bolthole – a tent behind the Cheltenham weighing room that she likened to a "torture chamber" – with larger-than-life Yorkshire trainer Mick Easterby and Lambourn's equally forthright Charles Egerton.

"There was little they could do," says Knight recalling Best Mate's third Gold Cup.

"I sat in my white plastic chair and my legs felt like jelly. For the first circuit, I could hardly open my eyes. I heard the commentary – and Mick added his quips.

"When 'Matey' was boxed in turning for home, I clung on to the arm of the chair with one hand and Mick Easterby with the other. Mick said, 'I think you're in trouble, Hen. I think you're beat.

"But Best Mate was a fighter – a great horse – and gained lengths in the air at the second last fence. I'm told the roar of the crowd had to be heard to be believed."

And so it will again if Henrietta Knight – one of the most popular people in racing and, shamefully, never honoured by her country for her accomplishments with Best Mate, the people's horse – scales new heights with Calgary Bay and Somersby, her new kids on the block.