So what exactly is his new horse business?
“We do horse breaking, so we take 12-month-old horses and prepare them to be ridden. And we do pre-training, which is taking horses that have never been to a race track and we put them on a race track. We have two race tracks here, one is 1,200 metres and one is 500 metres, and we have two sets of starting gates and barriers. This allows the horses to familiarise themselves with all that procedure.
“The third thing we do is rehabilitation work. We have an eight horse water walker, which is a pretty special piece of equipment. The horses walk around in a circle in a swimming pool with gates between them. It’s a bit like aquarobics for horses and it’s very good for their muscles and injury recovery. We also have an eight horse dry walker and a gallop speed treadmill, which is great for giving them exercise.
“The other thing we do is spelling – which is basically a horse holiday for a racehorse.”
Thenford Farm only started taking horses in February 2021, and there are currently 45 horses on the property. When all the work is finished, it
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John Sharp
Appointed as one of the youngest principal cellists in the history of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, John Sharp has served in that position during the tenures of Sir Georg Solti, Daniel Barenboim, Pierre Boulez, Bernard Haitink and Riccardo Muti. A top prize winner of the International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, he has appeared as soloist with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Mstislav Rostropovich in the Britten Symphony for Cello and Orchestra, in a recording of Strauss’ Don Quixote conducted by Daniel Barenboim, and with Itzhak Perlman and Daniel Barenboim in performances of Beethoven’s Triple Concerto. He has performed as a soloist under the baton of Riccardo Muti, Sir Georg Solti, Pierre Boulez, Bernard Haitink, Lorin Maazel, Charles Dutoit and Michael Tilson Thomas.
An active chamber musician, Sharp has appeared at the festivals of Marlboro, Santa Fe, La Jolla and Vail as well as the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. He has recorded Tchaikovsky’s Souvenir de Florence with the Vermeer Quartet, and has performed in chamber mu