Michael Owen will always be known first as a footballer, but anyone who has followed him since his playing days knows there is another sport that takes up a huge amount of his time.
Horse racing.
Now that side of Owen’s life is getting far more attention in Meet the Owens, the new six-part Prime Video series released on August 28.
The show follows Michael, wife Louise and their four children Gemma, James, Emily and Jessica. There is plenty of family life involved, but horse racing is far more than something happening in the background.
In fact, Manor House Stables and the problems, costs and excitement of running a serious racing operation provide much of the series with its story.
Michael Owen’s Second Sporting Obsession
Owen has been involved in racing for many years and owns Manor House Stables in Cheshire, where Classic-winning trainer Hugo Palmer is now based.
Palmer moved to Manor House in 2022 after previously training in Newmarket. His career has included major winners such as Covert Love, Galileo Gold and Ebro River.
For Owen, though, this is much more than simply attaching his name to a racing yard.
He has described racing as one of his main passions alongside family and football, and the new series shows just how involved he has become in the business.
That becomes clear from the first episode.
Owen heads to Manor House with former Liverpool teammate Jamie Carragher as he looks for investment in the stables before an important end-of-season meeting at Chester.
It immediately gives viewers a side of racehorse ownership that they do not always see.
Owning and training racehorses can involve huge sums of money, but there are no guarantees that buying expensive horses will produce winners.
Michael Owen Goes Shopping for Racehorses
That becomes even clearer in the second episode.
With the Flat season over, Owen heads to the sales and spends heavily on new horses for the following year.
Prime Video describes it as a major financial risk, with millions being spent as Owen tries to improve the quality of horses coming into Manor House.
For racing fans, these scenes may be among the most interesting in the series.
Buying the next generation of horses is a huge part of the sport. Owners and trainers can study breeding, conformation and racing families as much as they like, but nobody can know for certain whether the horse standing in front of them will eventually become a top-class runner.
A very expensive purchase can disappoint.
A cheaper horse can become a star.
That uncertainty is part of what keeps owners coming back.
Gemma Owen Swaps Dressage for Racing
The other major racing story involves Gemma Owen.
Many viewers will know Gemma from Love Island, but she already had a serious equestrian background before becoming a television personality. She competed in dressage and represented Great Britain at junior European level.
Racehorses, however, presented a very different test.
The series follows Gemma as she learns to ride work at Manor House with the aim of taking part in the Magnolia Cup charity race at Glorious Goodwood.
There are some amusing early moments.
At one stage Michael arranges for her to ride a horse owned by his former Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson. Gemma also has to learn that riding a racehorse up the gallops is very different from controlling a dressage horse.
Speaking about the switch, she explained that simply pulling on the reins does not always have the effect a newcomer might expect, with racehorses sometimes taking hold and going faster rather than slowing down.
The training becomes far more serious as the race approaches.
Gemma works on her fitness and technique, spends time on an equicizer and rides on the gallops before suffering a nasty fall shortly before Goodwood.
She is thrown into the rail during a training gallop at Southwell, suffering several injuries but avoiding broken bones. She is nevertheless able to continue and eventually takes her place in the Magnolia Cup.
For viewers who know little about racing, it also shows just how physically demanding race riding can be.
Could James Owen Have a Future at Manor House?
There is another family racing story running through the series.
Michael’s son James wants to become more involved with Manor House Stables, and one episode follows his father showing him more of the business.
That includes dealing with owners and attending racing in Bahrain.
James has Stargardt disease, a condition that has badly affected his eyesight, so the series also looks at what role he might eventually have within the racing operation. Prime Video describes his future at Manor House as one of the questions facing the family.
It gives the stable storyline a longer-term angle.
This is not simply Michael Owen buying racehorses because he enjoys racing. There is clearly a family business here, and the question of who becomes involved in it next is becoming more important.
Royal Ascot, Goodwood and the Reality of Racing
The later episodes take the Owens to some of the biggest days in British Flat racing.
There is Royal Ascot, where hopes for one of the stable’s leading horses begin to fade after an underwhelming training performance, and then Goodwood, where Gemma finally gets her chance in the saddle.
That is probably why Meet the Owens could appeal to racing fans who might normally avoid celebrity family shows.
Underneath the family jokes and football references is a genuine racing story.
There are expensive horses to buy, owners to keep happy, races to win, horses that disappoint and the constant problem of making a costly racing operation pay.
And for Michael Owen, there is another familiar feeling.
Football may have finished years ago, but the need to compete clearly never went anywhere.
All six episodes of Meet the Owens are available now on Prime Video in the UK and Ireland.
