The Times
09.03.2026
As parents go Peter and Karen Bowen’s pride reaches way out beyond the principality and their three boys are bringing clouds of glory back home to again to Wales. Mum and Dad have put something special into these princes from Pembrokeshire.
On my first visit 20 years ago they were just three little boys around the lorry. Last week they were three Welsh heroes gearing up for one of the most extraordinary assaults in Cheltenham or even in all sporting history.
30 year old Mickey Bowen has overcome childhood septicaemia and teenage trauma to take over the stable from his father last summer and reach Cheltenham as the leading first season trainer. 28 year old Sean arrives as champion jockey with 200 winners already on this term’s tally and 24 year old James is making ever more impressive waves as heir apparent to Nicky Henderson’s leading Cheltenham stable. Finally, to add to all this “Land Of Our Fathers” fanfare, Haiti Couleurs, Sean’s Welsh Grand National winning ride in the Gold Cup, is trained at Dinas Cross a dozen miles north in Pembrokeshire by the boys’ former baby sitter Rebecca Curtis. Mind you, after all this Owen Glendower stuff there remains a serious wrong to right. None of the Bowen family have yet won a race at the Festival.
But a quite astonishing amount has been achieved in the two decades since this correspondent last trekked up from Haverfordwest to the Bowen stronghold close to the little Welsh speaking village of Little Newcastle where Peter’s father ran the village store and whose only other claim to fame is as home to Black Bart, the famous pirate who first hoisted the skull and cross bones. You should see the house, the Bowens’ not Bart’s.
20 years ago they were in the bungalow but now they live in a gleaming modern showpiece flanked by sculpted eagles, lions and prancing horses plus, framed above the pillared entrance, a huge 6ft by 10ft colour reproduction of Sean Bowen in winning the 2017 Bet 365 Gold Cup on the Peter Bowen trained Henlian Harri.
It’s a massive statement of what has been achieved but there is no trace of the arrogance that often accompanies such things. “Sean didn’t want me to run it,” chuckles Peter of the Henlian Harri triumph. “Yes,” chimes in Karen, “I remember he called you a ‘Moon Man’ for entering him. Said it couldn’t possibly win.” To this Mickey laughingly adds “Sean didn’t know, the horse had just had a tongue tie” (for better breathing) and Karen concludes matriarchally, “I say leave the riding to the boys and the training to the trainers.”
It’s easy family banter but cloaks quite extraordinary bonds between parents and children. “We have seen how hard our parents have worked, we are lucky to be a very close-knit family and I speak to Mum and Dad two or three times and James three or four times a day,” said Sean on Saturday before adding with a laugh, “and Mickey when
he wants something! We tend to get on very, very, well. We enjoy the same sport and we all want to be as successful as each other.”
It’s something of a sibling joke how from an early age (“about four I think,” says James) that Peter insisted that his sons would have “no alcohol, no smoking, no tattoos, no piercing and no pigtails,” but, unlike in many families, the Bowen boys have not just signed up but added to it. They may come from a seemingly slow-moving old fashioned part of the world, but their schedule is very much that of the modern sportsman.
They both take their fitness and diet very seriously, the latter crucial for James whose natural weight is a full 10lbs more than his brothers. Together they have hired Andrew Thornton, a 1,000 winner jockey and now extremely well-informed pundit, to go through every race with them every day in advance and afterwards. This season Sean has also used a performance coach to discuss ways of handling his workload and both use their time in the car (Sean’s did 70,000 miles last season) to listen to motivational podcasts.
Amongst these is that of the American pastor Joel Osteen which suggests that the Bowens might be harnessing something rather deeper than the mere wish to succeed. Karen used to take the boys to church every Sunday and still goes herself. They and their father may not be signed up worshippers but they very much accept the Christian ethic of positivity and of treating others as they wish to be treated themselves if not all the way to Mr Osteen’s “you are god’s masterpiece.”
“I think it is really important to be positive,” said Sean Bowen on Saturday before riding is 209th winner of the season. “I think that’s what made AP McCoy, Ruby Walsh, Barry Geraghty, Davy Russell. That’s what made the good jockeys good – their belief. Like any top sportsman, Max Verstappen doesn’t think anyone can outdrive him does he? More than anything that’s what it’s about; going racing and having belief in yourself that you are going to do what you thinks best.”
So to this week’s unfinished business. Apart from his possible Henderson rides James thinks his best chance is the Irish mare Carrigamorospruce in the first race on Tuesday. Mickey will run a giant called Nimba in the Weatherbys Bumper on Wednesday and has an outsider’s chance with Ballykindar in the Martin Pipe on Friday. Sean has chances of breaking the family Festival duck on his great ally Olly Murphy’s horses in the handicaps but believes in Rebecca Curtis’s Haiti Couleurs in the Gold Cup for deeper reasons than that she was once their baby sitter.
“I know he has won the Welsh and Irish Nationals,” says Sean, “but he’s not a slow horse. He has the pace to travel well in the Gold Cup and he will be really strong in the finish.” So will the jockey and his siblings. It can’t be long before at least one Bowen name is on that victory roll.