Even Osborne has no hard feelings: The little thing we had was probably

Even Osborne has no hard feelings: "The little thing we had was probably me getting to her professional side ... There is nobody kinder." This perception of Pitman - impulsive, tough but tender, a solid, bustling Leicestershire farmer's daughter who acts straight and beats the toffs - has grown into a popular cliche. She is the people's trainer.This is most apparent on Grand National day. Every year, she books into the same hotel in Southport, dresses up, gets butterflies about the horses she's entering (Superior Finish and Lusty Light in next Saturday's race), and talks to the cameras.

Five times as many people watch the National on television as any other big race; Pitman knows this, and rarely disappoints them. She calls Des Lynam "mate" and talks about "me anorak"; she mocks the Jockey Club ("cut out the red wine for lunch"); she gets entertainingly angry, comparing the 1993 race to "an under-elevens egg-and-spoon race"."I don't think she thinks too carefully about what she says," says Lynam. All this rough charm has its element of calculation, however. At National time Pitman charges pounds 500 for newspaper interviews, twice as much with a photo; on television, she knows how to stand, how to liven up the pre- race lull with quotes "A little bit of the aggression is an act," says Knight. The thin-lipped man behind the counter at E J Wicks Racing and Hunting Saddlers in Lambourn says: "She's done it all. Especially for a woman." Pitman's blustery determination has only been seen to falter once, around 1990, when her results began to slump and a big owner took 16 horses away from her. Slowly, this became the renowned Weathercock House, with two strutting birds on the gateposts and winners in the stabling behind.

In 1980 she spotted a stocky chestnut horse called Corbiere; two years later he won her the Welsh National, then, the following year, the Grand National itself.Since then, she has been taken seriously. Two days later Pitman developed appendicitis, but she rallied and bought a yard of her own, based around a run-down former pub. She petitioned the Jockey Club; her horse was declared the winner.During the Seventies she and Richard diverged: he was out riding all the time while she trained, and they argued In 1978 he walked out. But this success, Pitman was immediately shown, had a ceiling: afterwards, "the press asked all its questions of Richard, not of me .. Richard duly took all the praise I could have been the stable girl."She made herself tougher. In 1976, after a horse of hers had come third in the Midlands National, she was flicking through the form books during the drive home when she realised that the first two horses had broken a tiny regulation. Still a teenager, she met "a boastful young man" called Richard, changed her mind about him, and married at 19, six weeks pregnant.In the same year, 1965, they borrowed money and bought a small yard.

Seeing an opening in the training market - no one was taking in difficult horses - they aimed at establishing their name at minor point-to-point meetings They had a winner, Road Race, in their very first contest. She moved on to Upper Lambourn, where the big stables were jammed together in a single, competitive strip along a fold in the Berkshire Downs. She rode whenever she could, fracturing her skull and breaking her collar- bone in falls. But female professional jockeys were not allowed in the Fifties. "If ever I saw one of their forwards come galloping down the pitch I used to look at them and think: `I wouldn't bother, because you ain't coming past here'." She left at 15, and travelled south to join a stables in Bishop's Cleeve, outside Cheltenham.During long, cold hours as a stable girl she learnt about horses. From the road, its long low sheds seem to stretch to the horizon.JENNY PITMAN grew up somewhere rather different. Born in Hoby, Leicestershire, in 1946, she was one of seven children on a farm without gas, water, or electricity She soon learned how to keep a turnip field free of weeds.