EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW SEAN BOWEN

It's my first time in the Gold Cup and it's nice to know I can win it!

- Matt Majendie

AS competitive brothers, the Bowen boys had a penchant for the destructive.

The family home’s fireplace — turned into a makeshift goal — bore the brunt of their football games, as they tried to emulate their Chelsea heroes.

The sitting-room sofa would regularly be shunted out of position, Sean and James straddling its either arm and battling one and other in imaginary horse races, whipping and slowly destroying it, much to their parents’ dismay.

“That’s just the sort of thing you do when you’re kids, but it didn’t go down well when they’d just bought a new sofa,” recalls middle-of-three son, Sean. “At home, furniture was never in particularly good shape!”

As the brothers grew up, the sofa was replaced as a plaything by a PlayStation, the game G1 Champion Jockey becoming the new obsession.

Bowen’s parents, Peter and Karen, have even suggested the game helped guide the racing tactics he uses in the saddle today.

Bowen is not altogether convinced. “I’m not sure whether it helped,” he says. “I was mad into racing at the time and wanted any game there was with horses.”