You would be hard pressed to name a role in racing at which Jim Allen has not tried his hand.
He climbed the ranks of British racecourse administration to become a top executive, juggled that day job with sending out the odd runner as a trainer, then ditched it all to set up a full-time training operation in the US, where he moved between cheap motels and racecourses with a Godolphin cast-off he bought for just £3,000, and even tried his hand in France when his US visa expired.
The 52-year-old has now come full circle as general manager of Epsom, where on Saturday he will oversee his first Derby in the town where as a racing-mad teenager he used to ride work and started down the path of a life in racing.
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