Since his last game of a glittering 17-year professional football career for Stoke City at Southampton five months ago, he has hit on two projects to keep the competitive perfectionist in him burning. One is to run next year's London Marathon; the other, becoming a jockey, is plain silly. "It's frightening, actually. Outside football, we'd never be allowed anything dangerous - horse riding, skiing, motor bikes - but I always thought what a thrill it must be to ride. I've always loved speed. Only when you get older and are a dad of four, you get a bit safer, don't you?
"Can I do it in about six months? I'm about 12 stone so need to lose a bit of weight and after Louise [his wife who is also a talented horsewoman] and Gemma have helped teach me the basics, I'll need to be practising regularly, get lessons with top jockeys down in Newmarket and at the British racing school. It's going to be a race against time." And a race to find time. When Owen retired in May, he had an idealised vision of how his life would be compartmentalised. Forty per cent of his time, he thought, would be spent on his new media commitments; 40 per cent on running the management agency which guides the careers of young players; and 20 per cent for his own delectation, including the racing "hobby" which has become more like a magnificent obsession.
Except, as he guides you on a tour of his superbly appointed Manor House Stables complex in the Cheshire countryside, the racing dream factory which he built from the millions he made out of his rare footballing gift and which he jointly owns with Betfair founder Andrew Black, he laughs that the "20 per cent" option has been scuppered because he is far busier than he ever imagined. "I wish racing was all-encompassing but I can rarely get a day off to come and enjoy this," he says, standing at the top of the gallops and gazing across his 170-acre site where 95 horses, including the half-dozen he owns, are schooled by resident trainer, Tom Dascombe.
When he bought the land eight years ago, there was just a house and a couple of grain barns but Owen's vision and ambition have turned it into one of the most advanced racing stables in the country.
He could never have imagined that what began with him as the then teenage assassin of Argentina, being egged on by his England teammate David Platt to buy a horse from trainer John Gosden - boldly, he ended up forking out for two - should one day mushroom into this "fabulous" creation.
He shows off the stables, the on-site veterinary clinic, the equine swimming pools and vibration pads to speed injury recovery and with almost comic zeal can even rave for England about the top-of-the-range imported straw from Canada.He has opted to reach for the stars, putting Panther, the "one in a million" horse he bred from his sole brood mare Treble Heights, in quarantine before trying to become the first from these shores to win next month's 3.5 million Melbourne Cup.
His first trip to Australia will be an emotional one. "When you've bred them, seen them as babies, watched them win and followed their whole lives, you get a special attachment," Owen says. Scoring for England never made Owen cry but watching Panther, "a part of the family", win at Royal Ascot prompted tears.
"It's funny; before a big match, I was never nervous. I always believed you were in control of our own destiny, that you could influence the game. Yet when it's out of your hands, watching your horses run, that's when I get really nervous and emotional."
Football's old ice man sounds as if racing has melted his heart. Unlike so many former players who find their life empty after football, he is able to declare: "I can honestly say when I wake up in the morning now, I don't miss going into work at all. I love football but I don't miss it at all."
In his later career, the more the ball was taken off him by defenders he would once have evaded easily - a feeling he says sent him "doolally" - the more he understood the need "to put into place all the many things I wanted to do when it was all over."
Like football management, perhaps? "Well, I can't see it. Some mornings, I wake and think I'd love to give it a go but then I know if I started doing it, I'd get the bug, it would become all-consuming and there would be no turning back."
And what about being a racehorse trainer? "No, I don't think I'd want the full-time hassle and stress." Anyway, there are too many other ambitions to fulfil. Like being Frankie Dettori for a day. "I know I wasn't very good on that first walk which, as Gemma keeps telling me, was the incredibly simple bit," Owen smiles. "Yet it hasn't completely put the fear of God into me yet." For once, though, one of English sport's born winners really can persuade himself it is only the taking part that counts.
Telegraph Group Ltd
