Amanda Perrett - following in her father's footsteps

Guy Harwood trained Dancing Brave, one of the all-time great racehorses. Ten years after the horse’s dramatic Prix de L’Arc de Triomphe victory Harwood handed over the reins of his Coombelands Stables to the eldest of his three daughters. What Amanda Perrett inherited in 1996 was not just a prestigious operation; it was one of the most innovative and best-equipped training establishments that Europe had ever seen.

Sean Magee (European Trainer - issue 24 - Winter 2008)

Better Talk Now - the multi-millionaire BC winner

It's hard to imagine that Better Talk Now, Graham Motion’s remarkable, late-running nine-year-old gelding, would ever cost his trainer a good nights sleep. After all, Better Talk Now's victory in the 2004 Breeders Cup Turf gave Motion a national presence, one which has only grown as Better Talk Now continues to perform at the highest level of racing with 14 victories in 47 career starts and earnings of more than $4.2 million.

Bill Heller
 (14 October 2008 - Issue Number: 10)

Peter Schiergen - we profile the leading German racehorse trainer

The number of champion jockeys who went on to become champion trainers afterwards can be counted on the fingers of one hand. In German racing history, only the great Hein Bollow scaled the heights in both professions, winning more than 1,000 races both as trainer and jockey. However, he will shortly be joined by Peter Schiergen, who was German champion jockey for five successive years in the 1990s, setting a European record of 273 winners in his best season of 1995, and retiring at the end of 1997 with 1451 winners to his credit.

David Conolly-Smith (European Trainer - issue 23 - Autumn 2008)

At home with Tom Busteed in his "nursery" for young racehorses

When I visited Audra and Tom Busteed in Cork freak gales were ravaging the coastline. Tranquil was hardly the best word to use; yet down at the bottom of the steep four furlong woodchip gallop, set within a wooded glen, was a peaceful stream in which many a Cheltenham hero had paddled as it carried its first ever rider. Slow, calm, meandering; oblivious to the storm of the outside world. This is indeed the tranquil nursery of Tom Busteed, the master tutor of the horse.

There is nothing rushed about Tom's preparation of a horse. "We do a lot of driving," Tom explains, "groundwork is so important. It keeps horses balanced and they can tell you when they're ready. We take our time. We like to have them for twelve weeks and those weeks are the most important of their career. We ride them like showjumpers, improving their head carriage, which helps to keep a horse well-balanced.

"These are tried and trusted traditional methods. I was fortunate enough to work with very good horsemen such as Tommy Ryan, Eddy O'Grady's head man, Tim Finn and Fergie Sutherland. Fergie is a great man, great patience with a horse, I rode many point-to-point winners for him." Tom puts his experience and knowledge to good use. "We assess the horses and also advise the owner whether they should go straight into training or have a break. It's usually better to give a horse a rest after breaking. The whole process is very stimulating for them and to then go straight into another new environment can be stressful. They mature so much quicker if they go away for a break between here and training.
"I'll ride eight or nine myself a day. It's not like work, it's a passion. And I feel very proud to have taken such a decent part in shaping these horses. Good horses are few and far between so it's rewarding to see them and know that I helped in some way. Sizing Europe, for example, is a serious chaser in the making. People say his jumping is a problem. It's not a problem at all, he's just such a natural big jumper, he's in the air for that extra bit of time."

"We are so lucky," agrees Tom's wife, Audra, "we see them arrive as ragamuffins straight from the field and then they're transformed into glossy muscular racehorses." Keen Leader, Asian Maze and Sizing Europe are just some of the illustrious names to pass through their academy. "It's very rewarding to change a horse around, to smooth out awkward traits. We start them over trotting poles. They haven't a clue when they first start, then after four sessions they're so clever. Loose schooling is vital, they learn how to correct themselves, when to shorten and when to lengthen. It's a natural progression for them then to fences."

Tom ensures that the horse progresses at its own pace, but there is one vital factor that can make an immense difference to his work. "If a horse arrives with us very well done it stands them well. The weight falls off them when they begin to work. If they've simply been left grazing in the field they are very backward and wouldn't usually be ready to race at their best until six or seven. A two year old that has been well fed as a yearling would have been in training in September and cantering by December. If they're broken in December they've no chance of a summer run. It's easy for a backward horse to get lost in this system. By April or May they'll start to fall away and they'll be dismissed very early on the Flat. It's good to break National Hunt horses early at two and then bring them back each year to educate them further, it matures them quicker. It's a method they've always used in France."
When it comes to formative education, Tom has just as rich a pedigree. "I started in ponies and hunting; my first venture into racing was in Newmarket with Gavin Pritchard-Gordon. That same summer Eddy O'Grady was looking for an amateur to replace Mouse Morris who'd turned professional. I started riding for him in 1973 and rode my first winner at Mallow on Prolam that year. In five or six seasons I rode 60 or 70 winners " point-to-pointers and bumpers. My fondest memories are of the very nice people I was lucky enough to ride for. Your first winner is always special, but another highlight would be riding a winner at the Curragh on The Arctic. It was one of the very first bumpers to be run at the Curragh so to ride a winner there was very special."

Tom also had a couple of spins for Nicky Henderson in Britain before finally finishing up with Eddy O'Grady in 1978, when returning home to Ireland. In 1979 Tom married Avril Hitchmough, who sadly lost her battle with cancer seven years ago. "I started training point-to-pointers," Tom says of those early years, "we had our first son, Desmond, three years later. Desmond is a keen showjumper." 
Tom himself is very much an all round horseman. "I did a lot of showing for Captain Tom Morgan and his wife Elsie, who have hunted with the West Waterford for thirty years. It has all helped to make me a better horseman." It's this natural skill that gradually established him in a niche market in which he has been happy to settle. "I was asked to take a lot of horses to break. I had work from J P McManus, young horses to break and quite a few in training recovering from injuries. Horses could be here for up to three months recuperating from tendon injuries. We recently started to break horses for Yorkshire owner Alan Potts. It's been widely documented how Alan travelled around the west of Ireland buying horses. His trainer, Henry de Bromhead, approached us and asked if we'd break them for him. And one morning they all arrived in a large lorry, Sizing Europe among them.

"If we built more boxes we could fill them, but I made the decision from the start that I wasn't going to pack them in and just put them on the walker," Tom says, "so we have twenty-one boxes, for pre-training and mature horses, with a maximum of nine at any one time to be broken. This week six or seven were ridden for the very first time. We had tried to cut down on the number of horses for breaking, but demand has shifted the emphasis back, with about half the horses coming in to us requiring breaking. We always have a waiting list and the business has been very busy for about eight years now. I'm happy that I've found a niche. Racing is so competitive and it's difficult to get a start in training, I've never really been tempted to go down that route."

Through his good friend, Enda Bolger, Tom met Audra six years ago and they've been married four years. Their first child together, Joshua, was born at the end of April. Audra is an accomplished horsewoman in her own right, competing in eventing and point-to-points, and has recently taken out a restricted licence, which means she can train for up to four different people. "That's useful for horses who are settled and their owners don't want them to leave here," Tom explains. Looking around, it's very easy to see why.

"Our facilities have improved a lot over the last year, we have a four furlong woodchip gallop on the hill, a sand arena and both an indoor and outdoor school. We also have a very good team working with us. Jordan Reidy from Mallow has been with us seven years and really knows the art of driving and breaking horses. Michael O'Connor and Melanie Forbes are very important to us, and Tom Drynan comes in regularly to ride for us, he is a very good horseman." In this respect Tom is lucky. "Yards are under pressure for staff and horsemanship is a quality that has become very rare. This means that the bigger yards need the young horses straight in and broken. I can see no point in this shuttle system of breaking."

Surprisingly, Tom reveals that the Flat horses are much easier to pre-train than National Hunt horses. "They don't need half the work and are much easier to handle. The National Hunt horses are strongly built, bullish and very unpredictable. We do a lot of groundwork with them to encourage calmness. When it comes to breaking in, Tom does things slowly, gently and traditionally. "Everything is devoted to care and attention and safety. I've broken over five hundred horses and I can count on the fingers of one hand the horses who have given us problems. We back them for the first time indoors. We get up on them for the first time, just lying across their backs, in the coral, which has very high rubber sides and deep sand. Safety for horse and rider is very important. We then take them down to the glen and they're ridden for the first time in the stream. It's the first time they're taken down there, so it's all new and interesting for them. The stream runs through a lovely wooded glen, so it's very peaceful and calming. They're so fascinated at watching their feet in the water that it takes their attention off the rider. They're given two or three days in the stream, then their first trot and canter is up the woodchip.
"You do sometimes ride a horse for the first time and be given a great feel. It's very exciting and it's lovely to give an owner that news, I'll often be picking up the phone just after getting off! Many live abroad and can't visit their horses, so we like to keep them involved and enable them to stay in touch. We take plenty of photos - the first time they're driven, the first time they're ridden, photos of their trips away, the ‘picnics'." Tom is a great believer in taking the horses out in the box for a change of scenery. "We take them to the sea. Fergie Sutherland calls them ‘picnics'. Pat Breen has a jumping facility at Ardmore, which is invaluable to point-to-point people, and we'll sometimes take horses there." A high priority for Tom is good head carriage in a horse. "And the first thing I do when they arrive is have their teeth checked. It's amazing the number of horses who have never had their teeth checked and they're not eating right."

Not every horse will go on to racecourse success and Tom's pre-training assessments are vital to owners. "Racing at all levels is so competitive now, you can't even expect to pick up a point-to-point with a moderate horse. It's a bad situation, with maiden races for seven year olds and up, and even they are being split into three divisions. The abolition of low grade races is a very good thing, over-production will have to end when there is no longer a market for moderate horses. It's ludicrous that owners fail to win with a filly then have a go at breeding from her instead. Lots of hopeful owners send us some poor horses and we recommend they go in a different direction.

"It's lovely to see horses successful in other roads," he says, "it's good to see owners giving them a chance elsewhere. We do a lot of restructuring for showing, it takes a lot of work. There are no shortcuts. They need to be perfectly balanced and a good ride. But it's good to see owners allowing them the time and work and channelling these horses in a new direction." And that really sums up the ethos of Tom's academy. His horses are educated not just for the racecourse, but for life.

Sir Mark Prescott - a racehorse trainer completely comfortable in his own skin

Love him or hate him - odds are against indifference - trainer Sir Mark Prescott needs little introduction. The unapologetic Prescott isn't bothered whichever the sentiment, as he is very much his own man and comfortable - some might say all too much so - in his own skin.

Frances Karon (European Trainer - issue 22 - Summer 2008)

Alec Head & Criquette Head Maarek - we talk to the extraordinarily successful father and daughter

The Head family has a history steeped in horseracing, just as horseracing has a history steeped in Heads. Their dominance began in France in the late 1800’s with Alec’s jockey-turned-trainer grandfather Willie, a British expatriot. Alec’s father, also Willie, was a highly successful jumps jockey and dual purpose trainer in France. Willie trained six individual classic winners as well as Le Paillon who won the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe and was second in the 1947 Champion Hurdle at Cheltenham when ridden by Alec. Alec stopped race riding that same year and transitioned into five-time leading trainer, breeder and owner extraordinaire. Say what you will: the clichés are plentiful, the headlines unoriginal, but the claim that the family is “at the head of the class” has been consistently accurate for over a century.

Their story is inextricably connected to the land on their idyllic Haras du Quesnay near Deauville, France, which has equally been at the epicentre of racing for many generations. During the tenure of W.K. Vanderbilt, the undefeated Prestige was France’s leading sire in 1914. An influential resident when the stud was owned by Kingsley Macomber was Rose Prince, the sire of Belgian Triple Crown winner Prince Rose who was in turn the sire of Princequillo.
World War II interrupted the tranquility of Normandy, and the Germans seized Quesnay only to flee when the Allies landed. To put it into context, Rose Prince’s son Prince Rose was killed 75 miles up the road from Deauville in the 1944 bombings. Although Deauville was spared from the fighting, Quesnay bore signs of occupation, so its American owner abandoned it and the property remained vacant until after his death. Chantilly-based Alec Head, with the eye that later enabled him to spot the potential in Lyphard and Riverman, found Quesnay and, with his parents, bought and restored it to beyond its former glories. The list of horses bred, raised at and/or retired to Quesnay is extensive – among the first was French Derby winner Le Fabuleux, trained by Willie Jr. – but Alec and Ghislaine Head (a member of the van de Poele racing family) also reared their four children in the idyllic 16th Century chateau. Three of them – champion trainer Criquette; champion jockey Freddy, now a trainer; and Quesnay’s manager Martine, who oversees the stud careers of Anabaa and Bering, among others – went into the family business.
At the conclusion of the 2007 French racing season, the Head’s homebred colt Full of Gold, sired by Quesnay’s stallion Gold Away and trained by Criquette, won the Group I Criterium de Saint-Cloud, in a now-typical display of family unity: when Criquette was a fledgling trainer, she conditioned her mother’s filly Three Troikas to win the 1979 Arc under Freddy. That was Freddy’s second Arc, after Ivanjica, trained by Alec, in 1976. Alec-trained Beaugency lost the 1969 Prix du Jockey Club by (what else?) a head to Goodly, trained by Willie and ridden by Freddy. With this family, there is a myriad of these examples.
From racing as well as historical perspectives, sitting down with the father-daughter team of Alec Head and Criquette Head-Maarek at Quesnay is a humbling yet singular experience.

Criquette, what kind of difficulties have you met in becoming the most successful woman flat racehorse trainer in the world?
Criquette: Well I’ve never had any problem. I was born with all my background so it was easier for me. Even after I started training for the Arabs, you know, being a woman, it’s unusual. I still train for Prince Khaled Abdullah, who is a fantastic owner, and until the death of Sheikh Maktoum al Maktoum I had horses for him and it was the same, it was absolutely fantastic for me. I think they see you as a trainer and not as a woman if you win races, and I was lucky to have good horses. So, that’s all. But I was the first licensed female trainer in France.

And the first to win a classic race in France, and officially in England, and the first to win the Arc…
Criquette: Of course, because I started before the others. You need horses in this job. If you have good horses it helps you a lot. I had good teachers in front of me. My father, my grandfather – they taught me everything I know and that I’m doing today.

After returning home to France from Spain you started in bloodstock and bought Three Troikas, who you trained to win the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, as a yearling in 1977. Was that a big turning point for you?
Criquette: I came back because I was missing horses, and then I was a bloodstock agent for a while and I started training when I bought Three Troikas at Newmarket, that’s the year I started training. It was lucky. It’s like the link of a chain. If everything goes together it’s easy. So that’s how I started. At the beginning I won’t say they didn’t say, “Ah, it’s the daughter of Alec Head and he’ll be behind her all the time,” so I just plugged my ears. I didn’t want to listen to them. I knew what I was doing. I knew that I was training my horses and whatever people would say I didn’t mind, so it didn’t bother me.

Either way, it’s not a bad thing to have Alec Head there behind you.
Criquette: Exactly. Yeah, that was a big help. On top of that, when I was making a mistake they wouldn’t say anything to me because they thought Papa was making the mistake. You need time when you start training. You can’t be a super trainer in one or two years even if you have good horses so you need a bit of time, and it did help me to get through everything because people were thinking that my father was the trainer. So for me, it was easy.

And you’ve probably reached the point now that when something goes wrong they don’t look at your father anymore.
Criquette: Well no, no, they still look at my dad. In November when I won the Group I, with Full of Gold, we won on Sunday and Papa had come back on Friday. He’d been away for nearly six months because my mother was sick. And people said, “Ah, we can see you’re back,” you know, like they were saying that was why we won…I don’t mind. For me, I am so pleased when I win races for him or for any client of mine of course, but when I win races for Papa and my mother it’s something special for me, absolutely. When I see my brother, or [son-in-law] Carlos [Laffon-Parias] winning, it’s rewarding.

I think it’s fair to say the Heads have had quite a monopoly in the French horseracing ranks for many, many years.
Criquette: Well, I’m not sure, but we’ve been very close together and we’ve worked together for a long time because Freddy was a jockey. He was the jockey for my grandfather – he started with my grandfather, then my father, then me. It’s a big help when the family is all close together.

How does winning the Criterium de Saint-Cloud with homebred Full of Gold last year compare with Three Troikas in the Arc?
Alec: That was nice. I was delighted. So was Criquette! But he is not Three Troikas yet. You couldn’t compare because Three Troikas, she didn’t run much as a two-year-old.
Criquette: She won just a maiden, by a nose at St Cloud.

Not so much the horses themselves, but as proud moments in Head racing lore.
Criquette: Oh but you are always proud when you have horses like that. To win with a horse that you raised is fantastic. I think it’s better than to buy it.
Alec: Of course. It’s your baby. It is your baby. It’s like your children.

Full of Gold brings everything full circle, in a sense. Criquette trained his sire Gold Away who now stands at Quesnay, and Alec, you trained his grandsire Goldneyev and won the Arc with Goldneyev’s dam Gold River in 1981. Your family also bred and raced his broodmare sire Sillery and was involved with Full of Gold’s first five dams spanning 50 years. Full of Gold is 4x4 to Riverman and his dam is 4x3 to Lyphard, probably the two best horses you bought. Just about the only horses in the pedigree you weren’t involved with were Nureyev and Blushing Groom!
Alec: I was underbidder on Blushing Groom when he was a yearling.

Ouch!
Criquette: As you say, ouch. And Vaguely Noble, and Arazi – Arazi as a foal and as a yearling. Remember, Papa?

Has training changed much since the days of your grandfather?
Alec: I don’t think so. Maybe a little bit in the way of feeding horses. I don’t think there’s been much change in the training. There may be a lot of changes in the veterinary world. That’s improved quite a lot, but the training itself is more or less the same I would say.

And the horses?
Criquette: Maybe they’re more fragile than before, Papa, no?
Alec: Yes, possibly. The cross of the American breeders brought us more fragile horses, that’s for sure.
Criquette: And maybe because of the medication they can use over there.
Alec: Yeah of course. You get unsound horses that go to stud because of medication and they will produce their problems.
(Watching as a horse sells for a big price at the ARQANA sale)
Alec: I’m getting to know less and less in this business. I suppose that at one age, the thing is, you go up, up, and then when you get to a certain age you start going down. And I’m halfway down – not completely. I wouldn’t give 300,000 euros for that. I understand less and less!

I wonder if, since you’ve been breeding your families for so many generations, you have less of these problems, the fragility, unsoundness?
Alec: It’s difficult to know where the lightning is going to strike, in every way. I know I’m lucky. If you’re not lucky in life you’re in trouble. You need a bit of luck, but you’d better help it. We’ve all got a bit of it, but some pick it up more than others. And that’s the point.

So I gather you’re anti-medication.
Criquette: Ah yes, that’s terrible. That’s one thing that we have to fight in this country. You can’t give any medication, and that’s very good. Nothing.

And when you do get a bleeder you have to send it somewhere like America, where it can race and will usually go to stud afterwards.
Criquette: Yes, it’s like that. It’s terrible for all the matings. Here in this country we’ve got less stallions maybe, but they’re all sound. We’ve got much more sound horses than they do in the States. I think they should be stricter on medication. Mind you, they race on dirt, and it’s hard on horses to train on dirt. Without any medication they would have no runners. But me, I’m in favour of no medication. I think a trainer should train. The trainer shouldn’t be a chemist. I’m against everything. A lame horse shouldn’t run. A sick horse shouldn’t go on the racecourse. It’s so simple – those horses should not run.

Where does the breeding industry stand today?
Alec: I’m a bit sad at the moment to see these two big operations. That’s what Miss Kirsten Rausing said the other day in a speech. In my opinion she was right, because it’s not good when you have too big a monopoly. There’s a lot of other breeders that would like to buy a stallion and try to make a living. They cut them off, and they don’t have a chance.
Criquette: That’s why there’s less and less breeders.
Alec: Luckily, for the moment in America, it’s such a strong country you have other people. You need people to spend and buy. That’s our problem today in France, we don’t have many young new breeders to come in. We used to have quite a number. Now you can count them on one hand. It’s like breeding those stallions to 200 mares. It stops other horses from having a chance to make it.
Criquette: And it’s bad for racing. It’s no good.
Alec: Everybody criticised [Rausing]. I congratulated her. I said, “You had the courage to say what you thought.” She didn’t say anything bad. It’s not because you say that it’s not good that you’re saying anything bad.
Criquette: It’s like me saying the bookies are bad for racing. It’s true. The bookies, they won’t agree with me. I had a call from England saying, “How dare you say things like that?” and I said, “I’m going to say it again and again and again.” I can have that opinion, that I think they kill racing. But Rausing said what she felt.

As the newly elected Chair of the European Trainers Federation you will have to deal with many touchy agendas. I know the bookie situation you just referenced is very important to you.
Criquette: I’m very against the bookmakers and I’ll do everything I can to stop them. The system that we’ve got in France, the pari-mutuel, is very well organised and it gives a lot of money back to racing so it helps a lot of the people who work in racing. We don’t want to see the bookies taking all the money from us and not giving anything back.

So what can you do?
Criquette: I don’t know, but we’re going to fight. I’ve seen things, where the bookies have a big horse with a lot of money on his back and you find that horse doesn’t run exactly to what was expected, and you could always think that something was funny. In Germany there’s no racing because of them, in Italy racing’s gone down, in Belgium there’s no more racing – all because of the bookies. They came in very nicely saying they would help, and then after time they took everything from them, so I think it would be unfair to force a country to change. It’s unfair to try to put everyone on the same level. There are 34,000 people working directly from racing and 162,000 people working around racing. So that’s a huge amount of people, a huge amount of money goes into your country for your country. You’ve got the proof all around that every country who has them went down, and we’re not going to let the country go down because, the EU internal market commissioner, Mr McCreevy wants to have everyone on the same level. It’s impossible.

And the tie-in with the prize money?
Criquette: In England the prize money’s going down, it’s getting worse and worse. In France we’re going up, and they’re going down and down, and we don’t want to see that. In France we haven’t got all those sponsors who put money in. In England they’re better off because they’ve got big sponsors, and that’s not our case; here the money goes back because the pari-mutuel is organised like that and it puts all the money in. We’ve got premiums for breeders, for French owners, for French horses even if the owner is from America or wherever. They wouldn’t do that if they didn’t have the money, and the day the bookies come in it’s over, there won’t be any more money. We won’t drop in one year. It’ll take time, but it will decline completely and we’ll be like all those other countries. Look at America: they’ve got the pari-mutuel. That’s why it’s working.

What about other problems, like home-grown staffing shortages?
Criquette: We’re not allowed in this country to bring people in like they do in England. It’s hard to find people. Our government is trying to make us employ French people who haven’t got any jobs, but it’s difficult to find people who are good enough to work with horses, so it’s quite complicated. We’re going to ask the government to let us import people from countries where they like horses. So far in France we’re not allowed to employ them. It will change, I suppose, in 2008. They’ll open something to let us bring people to work in France.

Alec, you yourself have overseen some major changes or improvements during your time as a trainer.
Alec: My jockey was the first one to wear goggles in Europe. There were big headlines in all the papers about the French jockey wearing goggles. I think in the States they were already wearing them. It’s like the helmet. That came gradually. I used to ride with a helmet over jumps in my day, but we didn’t used to have them on the flat. I was one of the ones who got the French to use the starting stalls. I pushed very much for that. We used to have a couple of jockeys that were better than the others at the start, so it was important to bring the stalls in. It was a big fight because lots of trainers found excuses, they were against them. There’s always somebody.

This year marks 50 years since you bought Quesnay. How did you acquire it?
Alec: I bought the farm with my dad. He was away because he used to go down to the south of France with his horses in the winter, and I bought the farm in December or January. I did the whole deal, and he said, “Okay, I’ll go in with you.” So we bought it together and he came back from the south in February. And of course the first thing he said was, “Let’s go and see that farm we’ve bought.” We opened the gates, drove in and he said, “You must be crazy. We’re going to ruin ourselves in this place.”

So you didn’t tell him the extent of how what bad condition it was in when you asked him to go in on it with you?
Alec: No, no. No! My mother was a lovely lady, and when I asked him, she said, “Listen, if he buys it, let’s go, it must be okay.” I told them when we bought it, “It’s in bad shape. We’re going to have a lot of work to put it back to being a good looking place.” So he said okay but he didn’t realise it was that bad. Imagine a farm untouched for ten years, the roof, trees, broken fences.
Criquette: Since the war, Papa, there was no one there.
Alec: In 1940 the war broke out. We bought it in ’58. It was in a terrible state, my God.
Criquette: Going up the main alley the grass, the weeds were very tall. It was incredible.

How did the farm survive its Nazi occupation duing World War II?
Alec: We didn’t have any fighting in this area because the Allies went straight to Paris. And when the Germans started retreating they had to get out quickly, because they were all going to be trapped. That was very lucky because the German general commanding the whole of Normandy used to live in the house. It was camouflaged, the whole place, the yard, everything. In the boxes you can still see some of that green stuff. We found the bunkers that they built. I blew up quite a number of small ones, but there’s three big ones we couldn’t. We’d blow the whole place up. They’ve got walls as wide as this table.
Criquette: And they’re very close to the house.
Alec: It was lucky because behind what Vanderbilt built there were still a lot of good things that the Germans couldn’t break up.

What has been your greatest success?
Alec: On the racecourse, the greatest success was Three Troikas, because she was owned by us, trained by my daughter, ridden by my son. You can’t do much better than that, unless the stable boy that looks after it is your grandson or something. That was a great thing.

The biggest challenge?
Alec: To try to keep on top in this business. That’s a big challenge, because it’s tough to be always near the top. I’ve had my bad days and my problems. I had a great jockey who died in my arms. That was a very sad moment. Terrible. On top of it all he was a nice fellow. I had to call his wife to tell him that her husband had been killed on the racecourse. And that’s no fun. That was one of the worst times of my life. I sold the horse straight away, and I changed my colours. They were my grandfather’s colours.
Criquette: You wouldn’t like to see those colours again on someone.

And you Criquette, your biggest challenge? The cancer?
Criquette: Yes, yes of course.

Another battle you won.
Criquette: Yes, I hope so. You never know if you win it really. But anyhow, that could be one but let’s think about things nicer than that.

Your greatest success, then.
Criquette: I don’t know which one. There’s a few. Let’s say the first horse you win a Group I with. That was Sigy in the Prix de l’Abbayé. She was very, very fast. When she won the Abbayé she was a two-year-old [against older horses]. I think the first Group I is something that you remember always. And the Arc of course, and then all my wins, I would say, all the wins I can get. It’s a big achievement, whatever you win, a small race, a big race. You remember the big ones, but it’s hard to bring a bad horse to the racecourse and win with it.
Alec: You know what I say, a winner a day keeps the doctor away.

How do you stay so young?
Criquette: He works hard, that’s why.
Alec: No, not these days I don’t work very hard. I don’t know. Good genes.

What do you want to be your lasting legacy?

Alec: The one thing I’d like to be remembered for? That I raised a nice family. I mean, that’s the best thing in the long run, all the family – the children, the grandchildren, the great-grandchildren, because I’ve got quite a number of them.

Willie Mullins - a trainer with strong opinions

I’ve come to Willie Mullins’ yard in County Carlow, Ireland, expecting to see some strong horses and to hear some strong opinions. With Hedgehunter trotting past me up to the gallops, I’m certainly not disappointed in the first instance. This is already second lot. Willie is behind schedule - “problems earlier on the gallops” - and should be under pressure. His phone won’t stop ringing, he’s got an interview to give and a runner in the first at Gowran Park. But Willie Mullins appears to have all the time in the world. I get the impression he’s unflappable, but in fact he simply knows how to prioritise. His horses are given all the time they need, without question.

The horses circle and he watches them for two or three circuits. You might think there’d be no evident change in condition from the previous morning, but any change is discernible to Willie. As they canter past for a third time he begins to call out instructions. “Two on the big gallop; one; one; two; two on the short; one on the short…” The lads hold up the relevant number of fingers in confirmation and exit the ring as instructed. The art of conditioning a racehorse comes right down to the minute attention to detail Willie has just exhibited, though he makes it look effortless. Perhaps, by now, it really is second nature to him. Few trainers are so deeply in tune with their horses and it shows, not only in the overcrowded trophy shelves in the kitchen, but as we walk back through the yard, the equine heads following his progress intently and ignoring, as one, the visitor. 

Of course, Willie’s greatest asset is his staff. Like most yards these days he employs a very cosmopolitan mix, with men and women from Ireland, the Ukraine, Poland, England and France. “To get staff from the EU a school needs to be set up to train them and provide them with the necessary skills,” Willie points out, “whereas you could go straight to countries outside of the EU, such as Russia, South America and Pakistan, where racing has been established for a very long time and the staff have a vast experience with thoroughbreds and already possess the skills we require.” 

And now, away from the horses, it’s time to hear those famous strength of opinions, to find out what really hinders Willie’s job as a trainer; what frustrates him about today’s industry regulations and what political changes he’d like to see made within the racing establishment. Willie sits back and smiles. But, like his horses, he is never going to get wound up.

“There’s been so much tinkering with the rules over the years and you’re never going to get a rule to suit everyone,” he says realistically. “I’ve got to the stage now where some days it will suit you and some days it won’t, and I don’t think there’s anything that really annoys me as much as maybe things used to. I just find you win some, you lose some. And the governing bodies are doing their best to make rules to suit the times we live in. If there is a problem then I think it’s the long delay in implementing change. With telecommunications being so fast it’s hard to understand why this should be. I often think if we have a problem and something needs changing it should be changed within six or eight weeks, but in actual fact by the time it goes forward to the governing body and it gets discussed it takes about two years. But I think HRI is better at changing things that need to be done quickly, it’s far more receptive and probably more professional than previous governing bodies.

“I think we are quite lucky in Ireland with our governing bodies. HRI has evolved from HRA, which got the running of racing from the Turf Club, and we’re also very lucky that our government views racing as such a strong Irish tradition. Consequently a lot of people in the government and the opposition have a huge interest in racing and our prize money levels have dramatically increased over the past ten years as a result.”

Asked if there is any one thing he would change about racing, Mullins seems surprisingly content. “In the general spin of things, probably harmonisation of rules in Europe and the rest of the world,” he says, after much thought. “Flat trainers travel more than National Hunt trainers, and jockeys travel all the time, so it would be better to have harmonisation within the rules, especially the rules of race-riding. That seems to cause most controversy. When punters are viewing a head-on film and stewards in different countries reach different conclusions, maybe it could be better explained to punters. But I think the Irish and English system is quite good at the moment, while the French seem to still have an old-fashioned type of view. Certainly, I would rather see more harmonisation in European rules.” 

When it comes to harmonisation of rules, medication seems to be another issue at the top of the list. “I think it’s fairly right in Ireland and England, where all horses are tested, the winners and other random horses. America has a different system, but then maybe it suits their racing. I’m not too familiar with the problems of dirt racing and keeping horses sound. They seem to have a lot of problems with bursting, that may just be the barn system and the horses don’t get enough air. It’s not as big a problem certainly on this side of the world. Obviously I had trouble with morphine contamination and, you know, I was amazed at the different interpretation of the rules by different governing bodies, even though the rules appear to be the same, with zero tolerance. But some countries’ interpretation of zero differs from others. And then there’s the way the different laboratories give the results of their testing; some have a different method of testing, which can lead to a bit of confusion. But we can see things being harmonised all the time and that can only be good for racing.” 

Which leads to the question of travelling. Has it got any easier? “Certainly. The bureaucracy has got easier; it’s just a matter of getting used to it. Maybe if it’s your first or second time going abroad you can get caught out with little rules and regulations and things, but it’s a matter of just setting in place the A, B and C of what you’ve got to do and it becomes second nature. When we have a horse entered in England my secretary has a particular protocol to carry out and it works out well enough. When you have things like foot and mouth and any other diseases it makes things difficult. You just need to plan in advance. It’s difficult, but once you know what you’re doing it’s not insurmountable.”

Not insurmountable, perhaps, but does it pay? “In France they have prize money down to seventh; in England and Ireland we prefer to give help to people travelling, even though our prize money’s only down to fourth,” Willie points out. “I would rather see our prize money in bigger races go down to sixth and maybe even further down. It would also help to prevent four or five runner races. You take the Irish Derby, for example: prize money goes down to tenth. That normally ensures you have at least ten runners and probably eleven. And that’s a big help for sponsors and I would prefer to see that in some of the National Hunt races. Our prize money should go down to lower places, it’s an incentive. Our top horses are the top horses in their sphere and even if they’re not in the first three they should still be getting prize money. You go through a lot of horses before you get a good one and they should be rewarded.” 

“In Ireland we probably have too many owners and too many horses at the moment. We’re in a situation where we’re balloting horses and we haven’t enough races or prize money for the horses that we have in training. In order to keep our prize money levels up we can only have the amount of races that we currently have, otherwise we dilute the prize fund - and we had enough of that years ago. Everyone made an effort to get into proper prize money, which we have now. But because people now can buy a horse for three or four thousand and race for ten, we now have too many horses. Racing is all about mating the best to the best to produce the best and I don’t see why we should provide opportunities for those who don’t quite make it. Every horse is entitled to a few runs, to establish whether they’re good or bad, but I don’t think bad horses are entitled to big prize money just because someone puts them in training. There has to be a cut-off point. We just can’t keep having racing for every horse that’s produced. The onus shouldn’t be on racing to provide opportunities for him. 

“We’re unique in Ireland in that we have enough owners and horses, thanks to the work HRI and Thoroughbred Marketing have done, and our government has also encouraged people, providing grants to upgrade our tracks and upgrade our racing. You always need new owners coming in, but we’ve plenty at the moment and we’ve an oversupply of horses. I don’t want to knock the breeding industry, I don’t care if they breed twenty thousand horses a year, but we can only cater for maybe six to eight thousand in Ireland. So I think we need to raise the bar a little bit, which our authorities are doing, so that horses that are good enough have a competitive chance of earning their owners prize money. Racing has to regulate its own standard and we are able to keep a standard because we’re a small country. There are plenty of other countries in the world where lesser horses can be exported to, lots of young countries starting up racing, and that’s where I see those horses going. Hopefully if China ever gets going there’ll be a huge market there.”

On a more domestic level feed merchants have been sending out alarming letters across the country and it seems feeding may have to become more cosmopolitan, too.

“This year we’ve had an extraordinary year with the harvest being so bad and very little hay being saved,” Willie explains, “a lot of trainers in Ireland are buying American and Canadian hay, and I’m told that there wasn’t a huge amount of hay saved in France either because it was such a wet summer. And our costs this winter will rise dramatically. Hopefully it’s just a blip for one year and we’ll have to ride it out, but feed costs are always rising and the cost of labour is always rising, too.

“We have found it very hard to get staff over the past few years, particularly with the Celtic Tiger causing a lot of people to go into other industries. We have had to import staff from both inside and outside the EU, and we’re constantly in consultation with the department of foreign affairs about importing non-EU staff. Horse riders, certainly work riders, is quite a specialised skill and while you can teach someone to ride a horse in maybe a matter of months, bringing them up to the level required to ride work and school is something that’s only gained after years and years of experience. Consequently we find that we’re employing people from Russia and Pakistan and South America, where there are thriving racing industries and lots of people with these skills who are quite keen to come and work in England and Ireland. 

“The EU is getting bigger, but we still find that there aren’t enough skilled people. The staff are being soaked up in England and France before we get them. We’re at the end of the line, on an island out in the Atlantic! A lot of Polish and Czechoslovakian people are going to France and Germany first. That could be why we find we have to go further afield. The most difficult part is just the red tape in bringing them in. You want a person next week or the week after and find that it takes three or four months to actually get these people in. Even then, it’s constantly being changed by civil servants. At the drop of a hat they might stop importing people or they might only let a certain amount of people come in, which has to be divided among everyone. They might only let fifty to a hundred people in during a certain three-month period. I can see their point, too, because a lot of trainers were importing non-EU people as riders when maybe they weren’t riders and they were just being used as cheap labour. When that gets back to civil servants of course they say, ‘here, this is a racket!’ A lot of responsibility is with our own trainers who maybe imported people they shouldn’t have.” 

Recruiting staff is all the harder these days due to a general increase in weight throughout the population. “Weight-wise in Ireland we’ve raised the minimum weight to 8st 4Ib and it’s helped, but a lot of the lightweight jockeys have been put out of business and have gone to England. You can’t just keep raising the weights, I imagine people are just going to keep getting bigger and bigger and there’s always going to be a certain amount of people who can do the weights. You’re never going to stop jockeys from wasting, if you raise the weights up to 10st then fellows who are 11st are still going to waste down to 10st, it’s just a fact of life. But what’s happened now in Ireland is that the better jockeys have the whole thing cornered and it’s harder for the younger lads to get a foot on the ladder. 

“In the last few years we have given riders longer to ride out their claim, which I think has stopped the turnover of riders. Middling riders can keep a claim and keep getting rides, whereas beforehand they lost their claim at maybe forty winners and if they weren’t able to ride without their claim the younger riders got the chance. With a greater turnover you’ve a better chance of getting new stars coming up. With riders keeping a claim for a long time trainers are always willing to put them up: ‘he’s not too bad and can claim five.’ If they lost their claim quicker the jockeys who hadn’t the ability to ride without their claim would be found out quicker.”

All of which makes perfect sense and it’s easy to see why Willie Mullins is held in such respect. Feed, staff and depth of woodchip, every trainer has his own method. But it’s the minute attention to detail that sets the trophies on the shelf.

Åge Paus- It's hard to keep a good man down

He was riding in flat races in Norway at the age of eleven. He rode his first race over hurdles at thirteen, and one year later he became champion jump jockey. Yes, it may have been on a small circuit more than 50 years ago, but it was already clear that Åge Paus was a horseman a bit out of the ordinary. He was. It was also quite clear that the kid from Oslo could go on to make his mark on a much bigger stage. He did. Some forty years later, Paus trained Group One winners in France, before things went badly wrong in 1981.

After a battle, “that took me three years and left me absolutely skint,” he had his licence, which had been wrongfully withdrawn, back. Paus had to start all over. No longer particularly impressed by the French racing authorities, he went to New York, where he trained for a short spell, before returning to his native Norway. “Training back in Norway was also a new challenge,” he says, “as I was dealing with quite moderate horses compared to my days in Chantilly.”  Indeed he was. A classic winner in Scandinavia does not exactly compare to horses winning races like the Marois, Morny and Ispahan in France. Paus was competing at the top level. A good friend of Francois Boutin, he trained for Robert Sangster, Charles St. George and Mahmoud Fustok, and Lester Piggott often flew over from Newmarket to ride his horses.

His story is as bizarre as it is fascinating, and as frustrating and enjoyable in hindsight. Who is this horseman, who turned 70 in October? What was his background, and where is he today?  To the last question first: Paus is still working with horses but no longer training. He and his partner Elle Bitte Ihlen work long hours daily treating horses. Paus turned his attention to chiropractic some years ago. They were based in Lambourn for four years, “and we had plenty of work,” he explains. “Most trainers have seen the value of this work now,” he says. “For example, when Brian Meehan got around 80 newly bought yearlings into his stables, he asked me to check each and every one of them, before they were put into training.” Working in England is ideal, in many ways, but not in every way. “Elle Bitte was keen on the idea,” he remembers, “she kept telling me that the UK was such a small country and it would not be a problem to get around - we were soon fed up with being stuck on the M4 and the M25 though,” he says, “and we moved back to Norway.”  Today, the couple works with Thoroughbreds, harness horses and show jumpers in Norway and Sweden. Their services are in great demand and they make a good team. “So we should,” Paus laughs. “We were madly in love as teenagers but our lives took separate ways, until our paths crossed again 15 years ago and we got together again.”

As a boy Age would ride his bike for well over five miles to ovrevoll racecourse, where he fancied riding those highly strung Thoroughbreds instead. “My weight was only 35kg,” he recalls, “so I was really too light, but I was given the chance, and rode races from when I was eleven.”

He took out a trainer’s license in Norway in 1959 and in 1965 he moved his operation to Sweden, where they had more racing. Paus soon had a string of between 80 and 90 horses in his care. To put things into perspective, the Thoroughbred population of Norway is around 450 horses today.

He bought horses in England and France and that is how he met Francois Boutin. “It was quite amusing,” he recalls, “how we first met. I was at the sales in Newmarket in the late 60’s, and one of Boutin’s owners was selling a horse called Irish Royal. I liked him a lot and I bought him. Boutin was upset, as he had planned to buy the horse in himself. When I realised this, I approached him and said that if he thought so much of the horse I would be happy to put him back into training with him.”

This conversation led to a long and fruitful friendship with Boutin. Shortly afterwards, Paus delivered one horse at Boutin’s stables, and bought five. The French trainer was probably more than happy that he had failed to buy that horse back in. 
“Boutin repaid me big time,” Age continues, “he was the one who made me realise that I should move to France. Things were going well in Sweden. Over a period of ten years, I was champion trainer seven times, but I needed new challenges. And Boutin was very helpful when I made the move in 1974. We took only five horses from Sweden, so it was very much a case of starting from scratch.”
On his trips to England, Paus had also become friendly with Richard Galpin, and through him he got two horses from England into his ever growing stables in Chantilly. They were Mendip Man, who Paus trained to win the Prix de l’Abbaye, and Sun Of Silver, who became a Group 3 winner. He was owned by the famous bookmaker Jack Davies. Paus got a flying start to his international career. He was not French, so the locals may not have been too keen on his success, but then again, he looks more French than Scandinavian, and his French was soon fluent too. Within a year he had between 90 and 100 horses in his care. Men like Sangster, Getty and St. George were also impressed, and put horses in training with the Norwegian. “At one point, I had 47 horses for Alan Clore,” he recalls, “who was the son of Sir Charles Clore, the founder of William Hill Bookmakers.”

Then came a horse called Nadjar. Paus bought the colt at the Deauville yearling sales for 120,000 francs in 1977, on behalf of his long time friend Gunnar Schjeldrup. The son of Zeddaan was out of the Orsini mare Nuclea, who was a half-sister to the German Derby winner Neckar. Nadjar was a stakes winner at two and but for the top class Irish River he would have been a classic winner. Irish River beat him in the Poule d’Essai des Poulains, like he had done also in the Prix de Fontainebleau. Nadjar trained on at four, when he became one of the best horses in Europe. He defeated Foveros and In Fijar to win the Prix d’Ispahan by five lengths. He followed up by beating the top class English miler Final Straw in the Prix Jacques le Marois, then ran second in the Prix du Moulin. Hard on his heels followed the filly Pitasia, who Paus trained to win the Prix Robert Papin, Prix Morny and Criterium des Pouliches (now Prix Marcel Boussac) at two, and the Prix de Malleret and Prix de la Nonette at three, when she was also third behind the subsequent ‘Arc’ winner Three Troikas in the Prix Vermeille.

“As a trainer, you must find the right owners, that was no different in the 70’s,” Paus says, “but of course, the best way is to win Group One races, and the owners will come to you.” Nelson Bunker Hunt bought Pitasia after her career in France and after a while Paus also had good connections in USA. Mahmoud Fustok of Buckarm Oak Farm had his own stables and trainer in France. One day he approached Paus and asked him to “find me a good horse.” Paus did that, and another good relationship had been formed. 
He trained in France for seven years, leasing stables belonging to the Countess of Batthyany, an influential breeder in Germany. Things had been going will for seven years in Sweden, and the first seven years in France were even better. They were also to be the seven last, however, as disaster struck in 1981. That spring, Paus won the Prix Greffulhe with the outstanding colt No Lute, a son of Luthier out of the top class miler Prudent Miss (Prudent II). He had been bought for just 640,000 francs at Deauville as a yearling. Just like Nadjar, he was a dream fulfilled. His name was soon associated with what can best be described as a true nightmare in the life of Age Paus though, one that lasted three years and changed his life forever.

“No Lute tested positive for steroids,” he tells us, “and he was disqualified. I had been using steroids through the winter, but never through the season or close to races. I was testing my horses meticulously all the time myself, as I had been taking regular blood samples when racing in Sweden. When I trained in Chantilly, we always took two tests of each horse, and sent one off to a lab in England and the other one off to a lab in Sweden, to get a double check. I wanted to know as much as possible, every day, about the wellbeing of my horses. Avoiding mistakes is so important in this game.”

The test was positive though, No Lute was disqualified and Paus stripped of his license. A few weeks later No Lute, ridden by Pat Eddery, outclassed his rivals in the Prix Lupin. The racecard gave Robert Sangster, one of the colt’s part owners, as the trainer.  After this win No Lute was sent to Henry Cecil in Newmarket and Sangster’s ‘career as a trainer’ was thus cut short – shorter than the battle his previous trainer was about to fight to clear his name. Paus left no stone unturned in his strive to get the license reinstated. “The results of the test were out of this world,” he says, “I felt that in no way could I let this go unchallenged.” 
Paus went to the police and pressed charges against “Mr. X,” meaning that he also told the police to suspect himself for foul play. “One big problem,” he says, “was that although vets in France were shaking their heads when presented with the test results, not a single one of them were willing to be an expert witness in a court case. Not just that, but the French legal system did not allow such expert witnesses from outside of France.”

Did he find such expertise abroad? He did. Paus travelled to the University of Kentucky, where he was assured that these traces of steroids could be produced naturally by a horse. Experts in Kentucky sent the tests off to two other universities. Paus wanted a second opinion, and he wanted a third opinion. All three reports came to the same conclusion. So, the married man and father, well aware of the fact that he soon needed to be earning a living again, made haste for Newmarket and the Animal Health Trust, where the original test had been analysed.

“I was well received there,” he recalls, “and I felt that I would be able to turn the whole situation around. I was asked to leave the matter with the AHT for a week and get back to them. When I did, the tone was not at all the same. I was told that they were willing to investigate the matter, but that it would cost around 300,000 pounds and that I would have to foot the bill. That was not possible, as I was nearly broke. But for help by friends and owners, I would not have been able to go on.”
Paus had the analysis, reports and conclusions from three highly respected authorities in USA, but in Europe he was running into a brick wall.  The situation was not much better than it had been on the day he lost his license. It is also part of his story that a couple of years before No Lute was disqualified, his stables in Chantilly were attacked by arson. Not once, not twice, but three times. When the actor Alain Delon learnt about his story, he wanted to make a film about Paus’s life. “They did a script, but when I read it I said no, it was simply too bad,” he says.

In the autumn of 1981, another horse who would play a crucial part in this drama entered the stage. His name was Vayrann. He was owned by HH The Aga Khan and trained by Francois Mathet. Some six months after No Lute was first past the post in the Hocquart, Vayrann was first past the post in the Champion Stakes at Newmarket. Vayrann’s post race test came back positive, showing the exact same result as No Lute’s. This time, no hasty decisions were made. The Jockey Club ordered an inquiry, and it took months. 
“I was contacted by the Aga Khan’s office,” Paus explains, “as he wanted to borrow my files from USA. Of course, I had no problem with that but my condition was that the Aga Khan would have to help me clear my name if the decision in England was to go in his favour. This he agreed to, and they had copies of my files. Again, my problem was this, whatever the findings would be in the UK, the French legal system did not allow expertise from abroad in a French case. My case was purely French, so there I was. The ongoing investigations in England were still so important to me.”

The Aga Khan paid for extensive tests of a group of horses in England, and the horses chosen for this exercise were horses that belong to The Queen, as they were under a 24-hour surveillance. The tests showed that the Americans had been right. Vayrann was not disqualified from his win over Cairn Rouge in the Champion Stakes and, eventually, in 1984, Paus was handed his French license back.

“I was advised by legal experts to sue the Societe d’Encouragement for damages,” he says, “but I also knew that if I did, they could appeal the case all the way to the Supreme Court. In other words, it might take the best part of ten years.” 
Understandably, Paus was no longer completely charmed by France, and when Mahmoud Fustok offered him a job in New York, it was easy to accept. Paus moved his family to the Big Apple, and began training a small string of Buckram Oak Farm-owned horses at Belmont Park. “I had around 25 horses,” he recalls, including a number owned by Mr Haakon Fretheim, who had owned the famous Noble Dancer. The problem was, he had mainly offspring of Noble Dancer, who was nowehere near as good as a sire as he had been as a racehorse. Noble Dancer had been fourth in Ivanjica’s Arc, when trained in Norway by Terje Dahl, Age Paus’s boyhood friend, and the colt went on to be a turf champion in North America.

“My time in New York was interesting,” he recalls, “but not very successful.”

In 1986, Paus returned home, or at least back to where he was brought up, and the small racing community outside Oslo was simply buzzing before his arrival. “Paus is coming back to train here,” was the whisper; “no way,” many said, “that can’t be true.” 
But it was, and he soon made his mark on the Scandinavian circuit, transforming the handicapper Flying Galivant to a winner of the Danish Derby in a matter of months, and training winners at a high strike rate. Truth be told, Flying Galivant would probably have finished last in each and every race contested by the Paus-trained stars in France but, as all horsemen know, it is not exactly easier to win races with moderate stock.

Today, Paus is working as a chiropractor and it is not all a new thing in his life.  “During my years of training in France, I met a Dr. Aldridge at Longchamp,” he tells us, “educated in Japan and Australia. He told me about his work with athletes and football players, and offered to teach me his trade. He thought it might be interesting to use it on horses. He also introduced me to laser treatments, and let me borrow his equipment. I picked it up at his practice after racing, and worked through the night treating horses after they had run, then returned the equipment in the morning.”

Having obtained this skill and knowledge also helped Paus through the three years when he could not train for a living, as he worked for other stables in this capacity.

Paus does not see his work a chiropractor as unique, “but I use laser at the same time,” he says, “which may not be all that usual.” Very simple mishaps can cause big problems for a racehorse, “a horse can become cast in his box, and it rules him out of training, never mind racing, for some time,” Paus comments, “and the horses know when they get help. Nine out of ten horses are easy to treat, as they feel good and become relaxed. I use the laser after having treated the horse, sometimes I use it before we begin as well, to loosen the horse a bit. We also use laser from both sides simultaneously. At the end of the session, I often make use of acupuncture.”
This treatment helps many horses but it must also mean they need a recovery time after the session?
“Oh, yes,” Paus answers. “a horse may need a day or two of rest after we have worked with him. Therefore it is important to cut down on feed, and they also drink a lot during these hours of recuperation. “

He also explains how he prefers to take a look and examine the horse straight after activity. His experience is that the main causes for problems are simply being cast in the box, taking a bad step in a race, and neck problems, which are often there when the horse is a yearling. In his opinion, horses that rear up and become stuck in the starting stalls should be taken out of the race, because “it can take very little to make bad damage.” He also says that jumpers have more tendon injuries, and that his work in Scandinavia has shown that harness horses suffer more frequently from back problems.

“Trainers in Scandinavia seem to be better with these matters,” he says, “they often have quite moderate horses to work with, and to get results, they need to be a bit smarter.”

Good for them then, that they have cosmopolitan horseman Mr Paus on their side. 

Max Hennau on life as a trainer in Belgium

Max Hennau, a founding member and current chairman of the European Trainers Federation (ETF), used to train between 50 and 60 horses in Belgium. In 1973, he campaigned the colt Commodore to a domestic Triple Crown.

Ten years later he handled the Belgium champion Little Vagabond. Bought for 1,000 guineas at Tattersalls in Newmarket, the small horse with a big engine won six races on the bounce at home and ran third in the Prix du Petit Couvert (Gp3) before being sold on to France. 
“Those were the days…,” he says. Things have changed for Belgian racing. Things have changed for Hennau. Today, he has more committee seats than he has racehorses. What exactly has happened here?

“This will be my last season as a public trainer as I’m going to concentrate on the horses we breed to race,” Max Hennau states as we meet on a rainy day. The weather is quite similar to the atmosphere in this country’s horseracing circles. Sunny days have been hard to come by also in Belgium this summer, and sunny days for racing seem to be a thing of the past. “I will continue working for racing, and hope the sport has a future,” Hennau explains. “For myself, I want to focus on my business. Yes, I regret that I did not make a move abroad 20 years ago though, you see, things were going well for racing here then. One saw little point in moving.”

Little point indeed. Hennau was a top trainer winning most of the big races on a regular basis. During 36 years in the profession, he was never champion trainer, but that was mainly due to numbers, as his arch-rival, Jerome Martens, trained twice as many horses. When discussing the current state of affairs, Hennau backs his views with key figures, and they really do look bleak. From having nearly 60 horses in his care, Hennau is now training just six. Still, his training establishment in Les Isnes and his stud in Temploux, some 5 km away, do not have any empty boxes. One even holds two animals, but since they are sheep it is a social arrangement.

Hennau and his wife Greta have a full day working with horses, so that side of the business not a problem. At their stud, the Haras de l’Escaille, they have 40 horses, including 20 for the famous showjumping breeder Nelson Pessoa, father of the Olympic and World Champion Rodrigo. Pessoa lives nearby, “but I only see him a few times a year and he is not involved in racing,” Hennau explains before he presents a few more of the key figures, figures that quickly tell the story. 
“Twenty years ago, Belgian racing employed around 10,000 people. All told, today the sport employs around 500. Fifteen to twenty years ago, we had five racedays a week,” he adds, “and each day with Thoroughbred racing only. Today, we have one raceday per week, and these days are mixed, with four Thoroughbred races and four trotting races.” 

If some readers are not too familiar with the English phrase “next to nothing,” they should be by now, as that is the best way to give a brief description of Belgian racing. Hennau is not depressed about this decline, he says, but calls it tiring. How could it not be, to someone who has no plans for giving up? “We still have hopes for the future,” he says and it shows that he means what he says, “but changes must come, if not Thoroughbred racing will be history in my country.”  Moving on to what ought to be funding racing - the turnover on the PMU - we are presented with more figures, telling exactly the same tale.

“Twenty years ago, the turnover on a daily Tierce race was equal to 2.5 million euros,” he continues. “Today it is only 25.000 euros. While the bookmakers can afford to give 90% back to the punters, the PMU gives back just 80% and that is not good enough. The solution should be very, very simple; give a better return on the PMU and a bigger slice back to racing. Also, we have a situation where bookmakers can take bets on races abroad, while the PMU cannot. It is an impossible situation. Remember also that bookmakers take bets on racing in France and England, without paying those jurisdictions any money. They pay for live pictures, that’s all. And Belgian racing is losing out.”

So, the bookmakers have seem to have a lot to answer for, in this country where horseracing appears to be on the verge of being wiped out. “I think so,” Hennau says firmly. “Bookmakers have not contributed enough to the sport, and while it may seem that they give punters a good deal, very often they don’t. For example, when they take bets on a race in France, something they do every day, a big outsider may win. We often know that there were only ten winning tickets in France, and for a bookmaker in Belgium the situation can then be that nobody had a winning ticket. Where does the money go? Into the bookmakers’ pockets, of course. If we have a race with no winning tickets on the PMU, punters are not victims of ‘daylight robbery’. There will be a carryover, a jackpot pool the next day, so eventually the money does go back to the punters. Though that slice is way too small,” Hennau concludes, “something that, combined with the bookmakers’ stronghold on the betting market, is creating a double negative effect for the sport.”

Racing jurisdictions lucky enough to still have escaped the jaws of the bookmaking industry should take note. “Oh they are,” Hennau’s wife Greta says quickly, “In France, they are scared, very scared.”

It is a well-known fact that horseracing has been going steeply downhill since Ladbrokes moved in. There may be other factors, and this is a little bit more complicated than just pointing the finger at one big, international company taking a lion’s share of the annual betting turnover in the land. Then again, and quite interestingly, horseracing is doing a lot better in small racing nations like Sweden and Norway, where the climate is not exactly as kind to equestrian sports as it is in Belgium. Surviving despite long spells of ice and snow can only be done with one assurance: a Tote monopoly. While the Swedish Derby was this year worth 53,000 euros to the winner, the Belgian Derby winner earned just 5,000 euros for his classic success!

Hennau touched on the return to punters from PMU betting in Belgium, which is 80%, and ten per cent lower than what bookmakers can afford to offer. Does this really affect the turnover? Yes it does. Look to North America and you will find the answers. At a track like Churchill Downs in Kentucky, the “takeout” on the trifecta is 25%. This has always been considered a bad deal among punters in USA, and it rivals the worst odds of any casino game. Still, when the new ‘Global Trifecta’ was introduced in Europe this year, it was done with a lousy takeout of 29%. Racing authorities are hoping this new international bet will be a success. One can be excused for having doubts about that. Hennau agrees, as he says again and again; “the betting products must be attractive, and give a fair return.”
“Racing in Belgium is also losing its battle with other forms of gambling,” Hennau explains, “mainly the lottery, but also casino betting - though that seems to be a different market, going into a casino is more for the snobs.”  

Racecourses are wonderful melting pots. Snobs enjoy it, so called ordinary men and women enjoy it, unemployed enjoy it, girls and boys enjoy it, retired people enjoy it. Some make a living from the sport. Trainers must make a living from it.

“This is why I feel that the ‘ladder’ is totally upside down in our sport,” Hennau says, “the trainers are near the bottom, and very seldom heard, while owners, breeders and members of the Jockey Clubs are high on the ladder. This despite the fact that while trainers have this as a living, owners, Jockey Club members and breeders often have it as a hobby. Even some of the biggest breeders treat racing as a hobby. “

Ten years ago, Hennau decided to try and do something about this, and help trainers across Europe. “We got the idea of a trainers’ federation,” he says, looking at his wife, secretary and translator, Greta. “So, we wrote off to the Jockey Clubs in France, Ireland, England, Sweden, Germany, and Belgium of course, inviting delegates from each country to a meeting in Brussels.” The response was positive from all six countries, but this would cost money. “I managed to get sponsorships,” Hennau tells us. “Some owners helped us financially, in particular Monsieur Bervoets, who owns the excellent Hotel Metropole. He gave us a very good price, so we could arrange the meeting there. We also received some money from the PMU.”

The meeting in Brussels in 1996 went well, and a few months later all nations confirmed their commitments to form the European Trainers’ Federation. This happened in 1997, and the ETF will thus be celebrating ten years in existence when they have their annual meeting in Italy in December. Appropriately, the federation now has ten membership countries, with Spain joining this year.   
“You have to bear in mind that everyone involved is doing this as voluntary work,” the chairman points out, “and we are now at a phase where it is important to keep the ETF going, and make it more recognised, better known. We have achieved many things already, as for example the change that a trainer who has held a license in one country for five years can get a license to train in another country. We have a very good relationship with trainers in all countries, and it is in everyone’s interest that we work for Europe offering a level playing field. It is not good that every country has its own set of rules and regulations. There has been some harmonisation but there is some way to go yet and it is my hope, and this is my biggest hope, that all countries in Europe will one day operate under the same set of rules. I think this is the most important, immediate, task for the ETF.”

Hennau steps down as chairman this year, and a new leader will be elected when representatives meet in Italy. “Most countries have had new representatives over the years,” he tells us, “which is probably normal. It is just me and Valfredo Valiani who have been part of the ETF from day one. Maybe we need more stability, and it would be a dream if we could establish an office and afford a full time position for a manager or secretary. Today, that is not financially possible, but the ETF would become so much better known, and so much stronger, if we did have a person who could work for us, travel around and meet people, and so on. Trainers have little time, we are all trying to survive.”

Max Hennau may be about to close the final chapter of his training career, “though,” as he says with a smile, “if I get a phone call from a wealthy owner who wants me, I may reconsider” - but he is not turning his back on horseracing. “I will still be representing the trainers on the Jockey Club board,” he assures us.  He has trained somewhere over 500 winners. “Not sure,” he tells us, “but it is minimum of 500.”  A considerable number in a land like Belgium, and he has also saddled winners in France.
His son, Elie, is also now a Jockey Club board member, having been a very successful amateur rider with over 100 winners. “He is a good pilot,” his father says, “after all, he rode winners just about everywhere he went, from Epsom Downs to Dubai, St Moritz, USA and Scandinavia…”

His son is no longer riding races but still heavily involved in horseracing. The situation for amateur riders is, of course, closest to his heart.

“Did you know,” Elie asks, “that in England most amateur riders are in fact assistant trainers working full time in racing, while here and in France, that would not be allowed.” We have just been given another example of European racing badly in need of harmonising. “Not sure what you think,” the trainer’s son who is now working in insurance says, “but maybe someone in England ought to look up the word ‘amateur’…”

That is not a word his father, now 60, needs to relate to. Since his time as an ‘officer’ at the Haras du Pin (the National Stud in France), back in 1966, Max Hennau’s approach has clearly been that of a thoroughly professional horseman. Having worked his way up, he is still very much a down-to-earth man. Horses tend to like those. As a youngster, he was selected as the one Belgian student to join the stud and to be an ‘Officer Haras.’

“The system was for eight students each year,” he explains, “six from France, one from Belgium and one from Switzerland, and the selection is made by the Minister of Agriculture.”  Did many apply for this position? “I don’t think so,” Hennau says in his typical modest way, not the least bit tempted to exaggerate the importance of being the selected student. “Later on, I went to work for Philippe Lallie in France,” he continues, “we had high class horses like Irish Bold, Pyjama Hunt and Miss Dan at the time.”

Lallie trained over 100 horses, and after learning at this big yard in Chantilly, Hennau returned to Belgium and took out his license. He was just 23 years old, and a few years later he had over 50 horses, training jumpers as well as flat horses. “I had two yards,” he recalls, “in Steerebeck and Groenendael. My two best horses were Commodore, who won the Triple Crown and Little Vagabond. After he ran third in a Group 3 in France, Criquette Head bought Little Vagabond as a lead horse to Sicyos. After that he was sold on to the USA, as sire of Quarter Horses! I had bought him for just 1,000 guineas.”

None of the six horses Hennau trains this year have a value as low as that, or even the equivalent at today’s rates, but none of them have anywhere near the same class. Little Vagabond was a cheap horse, bought by a shrewd man from a small racing nation, named Hennau. He turned the vagabond into a king and a champion. Rather than use the success as a stepping stone for an international career, Hennau stayed at home, and he turned many of his days into voluntary work for Belgian and European horseracing, which he loves and knows so well. Knowledge is power, we are all being told in this world.

“Yes it is,” Hennau says with his typical, quiet smile, “but financial muscle wins when it comes to lobbying and, sadly, horseracing does not have that. I hope one day we will.”

Mike de Kock makes Newmarket his European summer base

Meeting Mike de Kock, I soon knew that he most certainly is a case of a horseman turned businessman, and remaining a horseman first and foremost. Strange really, when it comes to light that he was brought up in a Dutch / English family with no connections to horses. Well, probably not much stranger than the fact that one of his classmates in Johannesburg was a boy called David Ferraris. A son of a trainer. The two boys soon developed a common interest in racing. This March, some thirty years later, they both celebrated a big win on Dubai World Cup night. Same guys, same interest, but today they are men. Horsemen. With a global view.

Mike de Kock is breaking new ground as he takes nine horses to England this year. ”Not necessarily to race in Europe only”, he points out over a cup of tea in Newmarket, ”also because it is so easy to travel from here.”  Yes, de Kock has a wide horizon. When he takes up ten boxes rented from Geoff Wragg’s Abington Place, his intentions are not to experiment a bit with runners at the two courses on the other side of town. One might have guessed as much. How did he select the horses, by the way?
”I took the best from my team in Dubai”, he smiles, in what must be a relaxed manner deeply rooted in his pedigree. After all, the man is due at Heathrow Airport some three and a half hours after we meet – to fly back to Dubai. Missing planes is hardly his style. Getting edgy is probably even less so.

A son of Tim de Kock and Ann Tinkler, Mike grew up next to ”the other Newmarket” - the racecourse in South Africa. With two years’ service in the army, working with horses, his interest in the animals grew. ”When I got out of the army, I got a chance to work for David Ferraris’s father, who was a champion trainer”, he recalls. 
 
de Kock is now a family man, married to Diane and they have Matthew (15) and Kirsten (12) on the team. ”They will come to England in their school holidays”, de Kock says. ”Diane’s father, John Cawcutt, was a champion jockey”, he continues.  ”She was born and bred in racing. She works for me, pre-schooling all the horses”.
 
He became a trainer by accident. ”The third trainer I worked for, Ricky Howard Ginsberg, died of a heart attack at 44, and I took over. Quite frankly, I did not want to become a trainer – as it wasn’t paying much. I had actually been for an inteview for a job outside racing when this all happened. I was within weeks of leaving. The owners gave me this chance when I was only 24 years old, and I had around 50 horses. It was a good start, and I was lucky enough to have the owners sticking by me. I had my first Group winner in about four months.” He still trains for some of the owners who helped launched his career in 1988. ”My client base has expanded”, he says, ”but some owners have been there since day one.”

Good for South African racing that he didn’t leave the sport. Today, good for international racing also. A leading trainer in his homeland, de Kock has an excellent record in a competitive part of the racing world.  ”There are around 200 licensed trainers in South Africa”, he explains, ”and with 150 horses I have the second or third biggest string. About ten per cent of all trainers handle over 100 horses.”  To the question of which big races he has won, his reply sounds not far off a comment on yesterday’s weather, ”I have won pretty much all of them”, he says and finishes his tea. Not that it doesn’t matter. It just doesn’t show. There is no salesman like grin to go with the words, no politician like waving of hands. Remember, this is a horseman, and a very calm one at that. There can be little doubt that laid back men like de Kock are precisely what highly strung thoroughbreds prefer having around them to get the most out of a life at the races.

de Kock had his first runner outside South Africa in 2000. ”Horse Chestnut”, he recalls, ”he ran in the Broward Handicap at Gulfstream Park. He was a super horse. Super!” All of a sudden it shows on his face, Horse Chestnut was special to him, and he has never been willing to compare other horses to him. ”We wanted to go to the Dubai World Cup - it was the same year as Dubai Millennium - it would have been an interesting race. The only way out of South Africa was travelling via New York, then on to Gulfstream and go that way to Dubai. We had problems because of the African Horse Sickness and restriction on movement. You could do 60 days in quarantine in America, and get away. The plan was to go to the Donn, which is a good prep for the World Cup. Sadly, he was injured. He won the Broward though, and proved himself on dirt. Many of the Fort Woods go on dirt. He is a son of the great broodmare Fall Aspen, and she won on dirt.”
But for a third in a G3 over 1000 metres as a juvenile, Horse Chestnut would have retired unbeaten. He won nine of his ten races, including four at Group One level. 
When de Kock was offered to train Horse Chestnut, he soon knew the value of the task at hand, and the success with this champion means a lot still today. Horse Chestnut was bred by the Oppenheimer family, ”I train most of their horses now and they fill nearly half my yard”, de Kock explains, ”we have quite a few owner-breeders, and I do not go that often to the sales. I do, but I never go with an open cheque book. When buying, I look for the classic type, a horse that can show speed early and win me a mile then win over a 1 ¼ miles later on. I train juveniles, and had the champion last year – called Kildonan – but I do not enjoy pushing young horses. I am not a big believer in two-year-old racing, I know that can be a bit a of commercial suicide, but it’s just not for me. I have many unraced juveniles, and the rewards are there when they get older. I often take these young horses to Durban in the winter, by the sea level, where they can enjoy a better climate, then come back to ’Jo’burg’ to race.” 
His team in Johanneburg is big, he employs ”close to 70” and when US journalists called him the ”Todd Pletcher of Africa”, their readers quickly got the picture. The Yanks would have welcomed him with open arms and he would have fitted right in on the other side of the pond. Why did he choose England?

”Ah!! Look, racing here is fantastic, we have been watching it on TV at home for years. I find this a massive challenge. Let’s face it, we will be racing against some of the best horses in the world. I’d love to be a part of the big meetings, Royal Ascot, York and Goodwood. I am looking for this to be a yearly base, I am not coming just for this year. The Dubai Carnival is great, but it is also just ten meetings, and it is too hot to train there in the summer. You need to get out. If you’ve got good horses.”
And good horses he has. Based in England, South Africa’s champion trainer feels that he will be ideally positioned for international raids with them. ”Transporting horses is so easy from here”, he says, ”very professional, it’s like posting letters! So, if we want to race in France, Germany, Hong Kong or USA, we can.”

”I really have to get my head round different ways of training”, he admits, ”this is completely new, also compared to Dubai, where it’s all flat, we train and race on circular tracks, similar to South Africa”.  On the subject of training, in different countries and different climates, de Kock says ”you always have to adapt to what you have, and methods are therefore different around the world. Certainly, that is also part of this that I love. You can pick up things from colleagues when training in new places, and incorporate them into your methods, you know”. 
”We bought Asiatic Boy specifically for the Dubai Carnival”, de Kock explains as we switch to one of his best horses. ”We got lucky.”  
Will Asiatic Boy be suited to English turf courses? ”We don’t know”, the trainer admits, ”he is a big, long striding horse, and hopefully training on undulating tracks will help him adapt. One thing in his favour is that he is a very, very sound horse.”

de Kock is now taking his training experience to new grounds, after having moved successfully from South Africa to Dubai, where he also had to adapt. ”The dirt courses are much deeper in South Africa than in Dubai”, he says, ”so therefore we work less distances at home. In Dubai, I will be working my horses nearly twice the distance compared to South Africa.” Taking a glance up the Warren Hill, de Kock comments: ”I think it is possible to train too much, and too hard here”, but quickly continues; ”Look, I am fairly scientific in my training, I work with treadmills, I work with body weights a lot, and hopefully I will be able to piece it all together - to see how working up these hills affects the horses.”

Two key factors pop up when Mike de Kock talks about the prospects of running a global operation: ”I think it can be done”, he says, ”but only with the right staff, and with understanding clients. You must have the right people on the ground, who are straight and honest with you, and feed you the right information. It’s not easy though. It is very taxing on you, on your family, and on your staff and their families. Therefore I don’t think it is something that I would do for a long time. Certainly for a few years but I doubt it will be sustainable, at some point you have to settle somewhere. It is no problem to ”winter / summer” though, for instance in Dubai and England.”

This summer will be an interesting and busy time. de Kock really will be running up those air miles, as he is shuttling between his base in Johannesburg and what will be a small, but very exclusively inhabited, satellite yard in Newmarket. 
Assistant Trevor Brown, an ex-jockey who has been with de Kock for three years, will be in charge of the team from early May, and de Kock plans to come over early in July. ”Brown will have three of my grooms, one of them has been travelling with me since the first year we came to Dubai”.

He uses his own feed, supplied by Mitavite, ”an Australian feed”, he explains, ”they are very good, sending the food to me wherever I am in the world, so the horses will be staying on the same diet. But not in South Africa, as we can’t get it there – it’s just too expensive. But the diet I use is similar. I weigh my horses at least three times a week, that tells me a lot about each individual. When I am going for a big race I weigh every day, at exactly the same time of the day. It is very important, the weight ”talks to me”.

Different climates has always been a subject in international racing and ”horses do not mind the cold”, de Kock says, ”though some horses peak in the summer, some in the winter. I do not know what it is, maybe even genetic, but I have seen it many times. Also, there is no doubt in my mind that the thoroughbred is better at four than he is at three. When the horse is three or four, he is still growing, and can have little niggling problems. When he is five and six, his skeleton has settled down, there are no more pains, therefore he tries that little harder.”
If a horse is more likely to be at his best at four, should the classics be for that generation?

”Absolutely! Look, if you have a lightly raced, sound four-year-old, you can clean up. I wish we did everything a year later. I suppose financially it is not easy. But; on the flip side, how many horses are we losing because we have been pushing them at two? So maybe the financial implications will work in your favour if the horses are given more of a chance to mature, then able to race later. What is wrong with having a five or six-year-old still running?”

South African horses are quite tough, according the de Kock; ”they are hardy, in wintertime in Johannesburg the ground is quite firm. We are therefore breeding a horse that can race quite often. A lot of horses are also imported, from Australia, Brazil and Argentina.”

Connection with the rest of the world has not always been easy, however. The South African horse sickness issue has been suffereing from a ”lack of understanding”, de Kock says, ”the risk is actually very low, and it is not a contagious disease. We vaccinate and the risk for thoroughbreds is low compared to farm animals living 24 hours outdoors. In fact, little things like not taking the horses out to graze early in the morning or in the evening, when there is a dew, reduces the risks a lot. That is the time of the day they are likely to be bitten. South Africa is on top of this, as you know there will be a complete closedown if horses are affected, with no movement at all. It has been a problem for hundreds of years and not really understood. On this matter, I feel the rest of the world needs to be a little more sympathetic.”

That last word probably sums up the man, I decide as our talk comes to an end. Minutes later he is heading towards Heathrow and ”that dreaded M25”, another track he needs to adapt to this summer. I am sure he will.
Mike de Kock, who once gave quite a self-describing answer when tackling this question on a Personality of The Week Q&A:
Where is your ideal holiday location? 

”I can relax anywhere when I take a break from the stable and phones”, de Kock answered.

I am sure it’s true.

Nick Cox - an Australian trainer now based in Ireland

The damp of County Meath seems a long way from the sunshine of Melbourne, but to first season trainer Nick Cox it’s home from home.

Mind you, it’s very misleading to refer to this as his first season, since Nick already has more than 180 winners to his name, back in his native Australia. So what made him decide to make the former Mitchelstown Stud here in Ireland his new base for training?

“My wife Elaine is originally from Navan,” Nick explains, “we met while we were both working in Newmarket. After six or seven years in Australia, Elaine started to get a bit homesick.” With two sons aged two and three it seemed a good time to move back home, but it was as much consideration for his horses as for his family that made Nick opt for Ireland.

“It is such a calm environment over here,” Nick says, as we stand in the peaceful and secluded stable yard of the old stud. A traditional courtyard of twenty boxes, tucked neatly behind a second yard, it would be difficult to argue otherwise. There is no noise to betray that the gates open on to the main road from Trim to Athboy.

Nick is the ideal man to ask when it comes to finding the perfect locale for training racehorses. He has spent time with some of the most renowned names in international racing and has gained from their expertise. Most recently he has been working for Emerald Bloodstock in Kilcullen, County Kildare, for the past eighteen months. It provided him with the perfect introduction to the Irish racing community. One of the great assets he feels Ireland has to offer is the lack of time restraints placed upon horses, both on and off the track.

“The great Australian racecaller, Frank O’Brien, once said to me, ‘Nick, they don’t run horseraces in the morning’!” Nick explains. “We have our own gallops here and I can take the horses out any time that suits them. There are no time limits on the gallops. In Newmarket and Chantilly the horses have to be off the gallops very early to allow for maintenance; also America and Australia, where the horses are trained on the track.”

And it isn’t only in exercise that Nick can be allowed to make time work for him. “The Irish have a greater understanding of horses and a great love for the horse,” Nick says. “They are far more prepared to give a horse time. Trainers are not under constant pressure to produce results.”

But Nick can also see an opportunity to exploit that careful time taken with maturing horses. Even as he speaks there are hints that his juveniles are going to come out early with all guns blazing. As foreman to Lee Freedman and assistant trainer to Tony Vasil and Tony Newman in Australia, and Willie Jarvis in Newmarket, Nick is the man to ask when it comes to the secret of Australian horses’ international success. He clearly has a fair idea of what that might be, but he isn’t about to reveal any trade secrets just yet.

“Something that you often see elsewhere but we don’t seem to do in Australia is train to pedigree,” Nick says. “You might get an obvious sprinter on paper who actually turns out to be a twelve furlong horse. Lee Freedman will happily admit that he bought Sub Zero to be a two-year-old. He bought him to win a Golden Slipper, but instead he won the Melbourne Cup.”

Lee Freedman is just one of the great influences on Nick. While at boarding school, at fifteen, he was lucky enough to have Tony Newman as his teacher. “I’d always had an interest in racing,” Nick recalls, “and can remember sitting up in the middle of the night to watch the European Classic races on TV. So Tony and I pretty soon got to talking about horses and I’d go and work with him at weekends and school holidays.” Most Australians have a love of racing, cricket and Australian Rules football and Nick was no exception, getting distracted from horses for a while and playing Aussie Rules professionally for three years with Carlton. “Then I went back to Tony full time. I learned so much from him.” Stints with Tony Vasil and Lee Freedman were followed by three years in Newmarket with Willie Jarvis, before returning to Australia and taking out a licence in 2000. So, what one secret has he picked up that he’s prepared to share?

“If I have to say one thing that gives a horse the edge, it would have to be education,” Nick reveals. “I think education is vital for young horses. A well educated horse will very often beat a horse of better ability but less experience. In Australia they’re trained on the racecourse. It’s good for them to see that environment, the rails, the people, the noise. They have organised trials – to all intents and purposes proper races. It gives them so much experience, which is invaluable. Over here they don’t encounter anything like that until their first race. In Newmarket, with such a large concentration of racehorses and the whole layout, it’s a little more structured, but still not quite like the racecourse. ”

Not surprisingly, if there was just one thing Nick could introduce from Australia it would be public trials, where at Cranburn, for example, 450 horses raced over a period of two days. He sees Dundalk as the perfect opportunity for such an introduction and would also like to see winter racing on the All-Weather. “It would take the pressure off the racetracks,” he points out, “and give trainers a chance to start running horses in January to get them fit. I think it would help to cut down on a lot of injuries, too. Horses pick up more injuries on the gallops than on the racecourse.”

Whatever Nick manages to introduce from Australia, it certainly won’t be the weather. But at least the forecast looks good for a bright start to the European career of Nick Cox.

Guillaume Macaire - champion jumps trainer in France for many years

Guillaume Macaire is the current champion jumps trainer in France, a title he has held since 2003. He is based in the Charente Maritime region of France at La Palmyre racecourse. In 2006 he ran 231 different horses and regularly campaigns horses across Europe.

In 2006 he wrote a regular column in Paris-Turf in which he provided insight into his runners, discussed current issues in the racing world and would provide his opinion on sensitive subjects.

Guillaume, tell us how you came into racing?

I was born in Compiègne in 1956, I frequented the racecourse at an early age. My family wasn’t involved in racing but when I went, I fell in love with it. The pictorial, timeless side of Compiègne’s racecourse certainly had a big impression on me. After a short career as an amateur rider, I started training a few horses in Compiègne, exercising my horses on the forest’s sand gallops. I then moved in Maisons-Laffitte for 2 years, then fate drove me to the south-west of France, where races were well-attended,  I went to La Roche Chalais (Dordogne), I won races regularly, improved my results every year and discovered La Palmyre where I moved to12 years ago.

What are the advantages of training at Royan-la-Palmyre?

The variety of the region attracted me, as well as the track on the racecourse, there’s the nearness of the sea with big beaches, a pine forest and its paths in sand.
When I arrived, the racecourse’s sand track wasn’t really exploited; some trainers had worked on it, one of them Martial Boisseuil (well-known in Arabian racing) had had a certain amount of success from 1975 to 1990 without however leaving the borders of the Southwest of France. The facility has several jump tracks, hurdles, steeple-chase fences and cross-country jumps, and now English fences and hurdles, also the addition of sand in order to have a testing gallop reminds me of the English up-hill gallops. Here, horses must maintain their rhythm and use their back. This allows me to work in good conditions and to make really good jumpers.
I’ve trained in different places and always used the same basics, I adapt to the facilities offered by each place. Here, in La Palmyre, I use the quality of the sand as natural ground and make the best of it. But what is positive here would not be anywhere else, all the methods are good but it’s necessary to adapt oneself. Good horses make the difference.

Could you explain to me your training methods, what do you consider very important?

All the horses intended to work here are pre-selected on their pedigree, on their appearance and on their movement, as only these criteria will allow them to improve their technique in order to be more fluent and more successful. Due to this selection I quickly have an opinion about each horse, if it has “attached legs and a welded kidney” it’s not worth working any more.
I’m talking here about the horses I choose, those for which I assure an “after-sale service”; there are exceptions, other horses I wouldn’t have chosen are brought to me and they are still able to win races. According to the proverb “the good horses make the good trainers”.
I like some of my horses to come to training several times and go back to the fields to recover or simply to grow if needed. They arrive for the first time in the winter as 2 or 3 year olds. Before that, they are broken in and pre-trained by people I know, who know the way I want my horses to be worked. I like to do interval training, as I mostly train jumpers, it allows to build the horse’s fitness without killing it (it’s used a lot with humans anyway); I put bandages on all of them, they help the horse’s back to carry a rider in the right way and they help for the animal’s submission and relaxation.  In their first month of training, I school them 3 or 4 times a week in a closed arena with 4 hurdles and deep sand. Indeed my inspirational mentor Baron Finot, (a leading jumping trainer in the 1880’s) whose methods I adopted and adapted to our time and whom rich painting (gouaches and watercolours) I admire had said: “the good jumpers are those who are used to jumping when they’re young”.

The arena is compulsory to me, I say it’s like a pianist is nothing without his scales, he has to practice, so the jumping technique is the main point for a jumper’s career and we have to practice. Then, depending on the horse’s behaviour and its physical ability to bear the training it will either run in the spring of its 3rd year or it will go back to the field to take advantage of the spring grass and will return in the autumn stronger.

Just as each person is unique amongst the universe’s inhabitants, my jumpers are individuals. I train each one of them regarding how it responds in order to get a certain standard, the horse’s quality will do the rest. My work is to form them as studious pupils. The trainer’s art is to find good horses and to find quickly enough if they’re worth it or not. 
Feeding is of prime importance in a racehorse’s life; it’s important to respect nature. For this I have all my horses on shavings and the racks are always full of hay (from the area of Crau) which avoids them to be bored in their stable and is a great help for proper digestion. They also eat oats and in the morning and bran mash in the evening (they have it even when they’re away racing, as I own several pressure-cookers).
Another essential thing to me is the horse walker, it replaces the lunging work that was formerly used a lot when people had time. I was the first trainer in France to buy one. It is surely not an economy of staff, but allows the horse to work muscularly and mentally freely without a direct constraint from the rider’s weight and hand.
The walker is used daily for different purposes, a horse that needs to let off steam before concentrating on the work for the track, a horse with a back problem or a horse that needs to recover after the races.
 I use a scale, horses are regularly weighed, especially before and after a race in order to know their exact condition. The optimum weight is a precious indicator of the state and health of the horse.
The work list is my puzzle for every day, adapting every horse with his/her rider then adapt them to each string according to the work required. I have as well to adapt to the new horses, their progress whilst keeping their objectives in mind.
No one can imagine how much the quality of a regular and constant work made in the morning is related - and improves - the final result.

Tell me about your staff?

My team consists of about 30 people; it’s a pyramid system whereby each person has their place and their function from the bottom to the top. In the summer we attract English, Irish and now Swiss riders who combine their holiday with a French racing experience. Noel Williams, Alan King’s assistant, spent some time with us last year and seemed pleased by what he discovered here and by the French racing customs, it complemented what he already knew. It is interesting for everybody to exchange different points of view as each country has its own habits.

You like to run horses in England, why?

I consider the level of competition is very high in Great-Britain, our best horses are sold and cross the channel when they’ve shown really good things there. There’s a conquering side in winning races abroad! It is the circumstances that brought me to England with Jair du Cochet, who won a Group 1 race (the Welsh Finale Junior Hurdle at Chepstow) first time out there. He didn’t pass the vet twice, so, pricked in my pride I wanted to show he was a good horse in order to prove my honesty. He adapted very well in England and ran only there, with a certain success. It is impossible for a horse to run everywhere all year through - except for The Fellow who was an extraterrestrial as he had won the Cheltenham Gold Cup and the Grand Steeple Chase de Paris. I take an outstanding pleasure running in England as this for me is the homeland of the jumping races, a consecration for every trainer to win over there. But I want to go there only with a first class chance or if an English owner of mine wants to see his horse run over there. If I have good entries for a horse who knows Auteuil I’ll stick there.

What are your hopes for 2007?

I hope we can continue where 2006 left off and to find more time for my favourite hobby – painting horses. 

Bendik Bø - the Swedish trainer and inventor

When he rode his first race, the horse was a year older than him. They did not win. ”I never was a very talented jockey”, he says. He has many other talents though. The Norwegian Bendik Bø (39) is a successful racehorse trainer and inventor, based in Sweden. 

He was never afraid to try his hand at new tasks. He was shoeing his first pony when he was only 14 years old. ”I had been watching the farrier at work and helping a bit”, he remembers, ”one day he did not turn up – so I did it myself, secretly of course, but it was fine.” Some thirteen years later he was a full time farrier himself. ”I had around 200 horses on my list”, he recalls, ”just shuttling between the stables on a three wheel moped. My business was going well, one year my turnover was 1.7 million kronor. It was hard work, but the fine whisky was too easy to come by. Drink nearly ruined my life”. 

 
”So, five years ago I sought professional help, got rid of the drink, began developing my main invention, and went into training”. He now handles one of the biggest strings in Scandinavian racing, training nearly 80 horses at Täby Galopp. At the beginning of last year, he had eight.
 
Bendik Bø’s main invention – it is not the only one – is a vibrating floor for horseboxes, to give the horse massage from the ground. He first got the idea when working for a trainer in Italy in 1992. They had the very useful sprinter Prairie on the team. ”Though he had tendon problems”, Bø recalls, ”and the vets told us his career was over. I felt we could give him a chance, and even had a bet with one of the vets that we would get him back on the track and win a certain amount of prize money with him. We did get him back on the track, and he won five races for us in Sweden the following season. We then took him to Italy, but his problems came back. After some improvement, we could train him though, and entered him in a Listed race in Milan. I was driving the horsebox, doing a trip of 350 kilometres. It was an old horsebox, very stiff, and not a very smooth drive at all. We could feel a lot of vibration on our way to Milan. On arrival, I noticed that the horse was moving, and clearly feeling, so much better than I had ever seen him. He won the race, running 1200 metres in 1:07.and beating a good ex-English horse called Reference Light, who was second in a Group Two the same year.”  
 
”When driving back from winning that Listed event, I remember thinking how convinced I was that the ”vibrating” box ride had something to do with Prairie’s performance that day. And I said to myself, ’I must find a way to get this box into the stable...” he says. Prairie, who had been a champion in Sweden, also ran fourth to Special Power in the Premio Certosa (Gp 3) at San Siro. Bø won the bet with the vet.
 
The idea of a vibrating floor was to be experimented with, and pondered on, for nine years before Bø and members of his family back home in Norway started working seriously on the project five years ago. ”During those years, my life took some twist and turns”, he explains openly, ”I was heading in the wrong direction. I always wanted to return to a life working closely with horses. Alcohol is a very, very dangerous friend, however, and could easily have ended all my ambitions. Admitting himself to a clinic in Norway for seven weeks, he came out a tea-total, and very determined young man. ”Some may have said I was not going to get away from the drink”, he says, ”but I did, and I decided to put my life to better use. The same year we decided to give the vibrating floor a real crack too. My house was tidy and it was time get the drawing board out.”  
 
From starting out as an amateur rider, to be just a run of the mill jockey, then an inventor and very good trainer, Bø strikes us as a man whose strong will has pushed him through storms where many would have turned back and gone back to more conventional life than working with racehorses in Scandinavia. After all, making a decent living from thoroughbreds in Norway, is not much easier than making a living from skiing in England. That was also why he turned his back on the sport when he was 16 years old. He was young but had been involved for years and already saw how tough it would be, financially, to make it.
 
A career in the saddle was always going to be a ride against all odds. Bø is 1.78m tall, and his lowest riding weight was 57 kilograms. ”You just can’t live like that for very long”, he says, ”and after riding about 20 races, and no winners, I left the sport and took an agricultural education instead. When that was completed I was riding out from time to time, and did some farrier work to make extra money – but eventually I left racing to work on a cow farm in Norway. It lasted just a couple of years. I was soon drawn back to the horses, and to racing”.  
 
His ticket back into horseracing came when he was offered an apprenticeship with trainer Trond Hansen, one of the leading trainers in Norway - now based in Germany. ”It was a good time to join his yard”, he says, ”as we had some classy horses, like Salient, who had been bought out of Dick Hern’s team for 110,000 guineas – then a record price - at the 1985 Tattersalls Horses in Training Sales in Newmarket. He was previously owned by the Queen, by the way, and was a top horse in Scandinavia. We also had a 2000 Guineas winner and a champion sprinter the same year.”  The inspiration was back, although it meant riding out in 20 degrees below at wintertime, hardly eating at all, and sometimes travelling about ten hours by horsebox to race meetings in Sweden and Denmark. ”My interest was back, though my race riding was still not going all that well...”
 
A winner, at long last
 
Some two years later, a Swedish jockey, of the opposite sex, persuaded Bø to come with her to work at Täby Galopp outside the Swedish capital Stockholm, where racing is considerably bigger than in Norway. ”At long last”, he recalls, ”soon after moving, I rode my first winner. I was 20 years old, my stubborness got be to the winners’ circle – but it had taken some time!” 
 
A few more winners followed, and Bø also began riding over jumps. Working for Olle Stenstrøm, who trained quite a few good hurdlers and chasers, the young Norwegian was now partnering winners on a more regular basis. He moved on to work for Claes Bjørling, who took horses from Sweden to Italy. Bjørling also bought horses out of sellers in England and campaigned them successfully in Italy. Bø rode at many of the Italian courses. He enjoyed success at Capannelle, Pisa and Treviso, and also rode at Cagnes-sur-Mer in France. 
 
”One of our best jumpers was a horse called Obeliski”, Bø tells us, ”Mr Bjørling got him out of a claiming chase at Southwell, when his official hurdle rating in England was just 128. I rode him to be fifth in the Italian Champion Hurdle. I remember being very proud of having beaten the high class English hurdler Staunch Friend and Steve Smith Eccles in the race. Not bad you know, on a cheap claimer. My boss also claimed a horse called Bighayir, who had won ten races for Martin Pipe, but he did not jump well enough when we took him to Cagnes-sur-Mer.”  
 
The French course does, like Bendik’s boyhood city, sit by the seaside. Though that is the only thing Cagnes-sur-Mer and the city Larvik in Norway has in common. 
 
Bø grew up in Larvik. He is by no means the only man with a thinking cap fostered in the small seaside city. Larvik’s most famous son is Thor Heyerdahl, the anthropologist who sailed the raft ”Kon-Tiki”, made of Balsa wood, from Peru across the Pacific Ocean to Tamoto Islands, to prove that ancient Peruvians could have reached Polynesia in this manner. In 1947, Heyerdahl and his five companions made the 8000-kilometre crossing in the primitive vessel, taking 101 days.
 
Growing up in Norway, let alone Larvik, without knowledge of Heyerdahl’s name and work is virtually impossible – but Bendik was not interested in anthropology. He liked horses better. He turned up at Hovland Ridestall, the local riding school, when he was ”seven or eight years old”. He had no money in his pocket for riding lessons of course, so instead he struck up a deal with the owner of the place. Bendik mucked out boxes without being paid, and was given sporadic riding lessons in return. After a few years of this, he and his schoolmates were given responsibilities in the stable, owned by Knut Rimstad, who combined running a riding school with racing a small string of his own horses at Øvrevoll racecourse outside Oslo. The boys also travelled with the horses to the races. ”Some of Rimstad’s racehorses were even used for lessons at the riding school”, Bendik recalls. 
 
The ambition was clear enough; to become a jockey. And the teenage boy was never short on imagination. When a replacement rider was needed for a horse in an amateur race that very evening, at short notice, he got his friend Roy Arne Kvisla out of the classroom at school. Kvisla, who is now a trainer in Lambourn, had never ridden in a race but he was old enough to do so. Bendik was not, so he knocked on his mate’s classroom door. It was a daring move, as behind that door they were having an important test in chemistry. Bendik told the teacher that Roy’s mother was ill, and that he had better come along with him. The teacher agreed. The boys headed off to the stables, from there to the races at Øvrevoll, where Kvisla rode the horse – and won the race. Fortunately, the teacher never bothered with the racing results when browsing the morning papers!
 
Bø himself rode his first race at 15, the minimum age for race riding, partnering a veteran called Federation. The horse was a year older than the rider. ”We finished fifth”, Bø tells us, ”I kept on riding, and over the years I have partnered over 80 winners on the flat and over jumps. But to be honest, I never was very good as a jockey”. 
 
He rode his last race in 1994, when experiencing a bad fall on a hurdler that broke both front legs during a race – on the flat. ”I just heard a solid bang when we went down”, Bendik recalls, ”I took a heavy, heavy fall and that was it. No more race riding for me. I decided to quit while still in one piece.” His riding career, which had began on a 16-year-old plodder at Øvrevoll when he was 15, thus ended with an incredible and nasty fall on a jumper at Täby Galopp when he was 27.
 
To this day, Øvrevoll is the only thoroughbred venue in Norway. Harness racing is dominant, and the country has no more than 380 active thoroughbreds. This season, Bendik Bø has taken over the stable of retiring Michael Kahn, many times champion trainer in Sweden. This move puts him in charge of close to 80 horses, more than a fifth of the racehorse population in his native Norway. And he is still mucking out boxes – ”we’ve got to work”, he smiles. 
 
There is an active exchange of horses, trainers, jockeys and staff in general, between the Scandinavian racing communities. In particular between Norway and Sweden, and Bø has been back and forth between the Oslo region and the Stockholm region a few times. In 1986, when he travelled east to pursue his career in the saddle, it led to a life as a farrier, making good money, but also to a lifestyle that led to too much partying and drinking. The tall, slim and happy Norwegian was never violent when drunk, just having a good time and often playing his violin to entertain the party. 15 years later he was heading back home, to get rid of ”a dangerous friend” as he calls it, to cure his alcoholism. ”I woke up one morning feeling really fed up with my life”, he reflects, ”it was time to take a turn”. 
 
Harness racing
 
After travelling back to Norway to sort out his problems with drinking, which his motivation helped him do in less than two months, Bendik took out a license to train horses there. He was based back in his hometown Larvik, training a small string. ”I wanted to work on the vibrating floor and do more research with active horses”, he says, ”and with other family members I set up the company Vitafloor. My idea was to get horses with problems, treat them, use the floor to give them effective massage, and train them for racing. In order to get enough such horses, and get enough experience with racing horses that had been using the floor, I had to turn to trotting. With only five to six thoroughbreds, I had over 20 trotters in my stable. I had trotters racing at all the big tracks in Norway. It all went relatively well and we even shipped a horse to win a valuable race in Sweden. I am convinced that my years working with trotters is very valuable today.” 
 
Bø trained thoroughbreds side by side with warm blooded trotters, and trotters of Nordic race, often described as ”cold blood horses”. He says that getting as much experience as possible, with a variety of individuals, is how to become a good horseman. As long as you pay attention of course. After five years in Norway, he moved back to Sweden for the 2006 season, to train at Täby Galopp. His initial team there was even smaller. ”I took over from Roy Arne Kvisla as he left for England”, he explains, and I had eight horses to train.” At the turn of the year he had 42. He saddled 26 winners from 118 runners, for a healthy 22% strike rate.
 
It helped him tremendously of course, that he revitalised the 10-year-old sprinter Waquaas to such an extent that the gelding won three races on the bounce early in the season, including a pair of Listed contests; the Taby Vårsprint and the Norsk Jockeyclub Sprint. Bø was off to a good start on his return to Sweden. 
 
Today, he is in charge of the biggest string in the land. There is no spare time, ”We employ ten full time, plus use some freelance work riders”, he explains, ”but I work seven days a week myself, as does my partner Mette Kjelsli. What spare time I get is often dedicated to my inventions. But you know, I can also think through those ideas when on an eight-hour drive to the Danish or Norwegian Derby meeting!” 
 
”We race year round here”, he explains, ”on turf and dirt, and I divide my horses in two groups, the best horses are active through the spring, summer and early autumn, while the lesser lights will be racing mainly at wintertime. Taby Galopp owns a farm close to the track, where I rent some boxes. This is where we send the horses for breaks, though some also go back to their owners’ farms for rests”, he says. His string consists approximately of 60 per cent imports, mainly bought in England, and 40 per cent Scandinavian breds.
 
Simple solution the beginning
 
Returning to the inventions, Bø tells the fascinating story about how he took the first small steps towards what today is the highly sophisticated Vitafloor. 
 
”I took a big board, attached an engine under the board, placed the whole thing of four blocks of wood shavings, and switched the engine on”, he tells us, ”I tried walking on it, lying on it and feeling the massaging effect. This was just my first prototype of course, but other jockeys used this vibrating board too, just to get a relaxing massage after riding. It was obvious that it would not be quite that simple but at least I had discovered that my theory was working, to a certain extent. So, I kept on thinking about solutions for many years.” Today, Bø has sold the Vitafloor to various trainers, both of thoroughbreds and harness horses, and veterinarian clinics in Scandinavia, and recently his company exported the first floor to Dubai.  
 
Bø has also invented elastic reins. ”When the horse breaks into a gallop”, he explains, ”he will always stretch his neck out, and pull for a bit more rein. No rider has a hand quick enough to accomodate the horse during these few strides, to give the horse a smooth communication through the reins. I had noticed how, at the start of many a race, horses and riders were not in full harmony and perfect rhythm – they were not working as a team, and the horse was often tugging sharply against the bit when trying to find his balance. Therefore I made elastic reins. It is very simple, the rein runs in an s-shape, with elastic bands attached straight across. This means that the horse gets a bit more leeway and freedom when gaining his balance as he picks up speed – but when he pulls harder, the reins go to full stretch and take over. The elastic band is only a matter of a four to five centimetres but that is enough to make quite a difference.”
 
He has sold ”a couple of hundred” of these reins, ”I produce them myself”, Bø says. And when he got his first cat, he soon became fed up cleaning the cat case, so he invented a cat case that could be cleaned in 15 seconds. ”I have patented that too”, he explains, ”but it has never been commercially marketed. I am working on more important prototypes for the equestrian industry right now, the cat case was just for fun, really”. 
 
At a track like Täby Galopp everyone knows everyone. ”There are about 20 trainers based here”, Bø tells us, ”and the number of horses stabled at the track is always around 400. The country has about 1400 racehorses. Swedish racing has been struggling, that is no big secret, but there is a positive will to move forward here, and people work well together”, he says. 
 
On the racetrack committee
 
The racecourse management has formed a track committee, with meetings every two weeks. Bø is a member of this committee and he explains; 
 
”I represent the trainers, there is also a jockey on the committee, as well as the general manager, the head groundsman and a veterinarian present. We meet for lunch twice a month, exchange ideas and discuss how best to improve the racecourse – both for training and racing. I enjoy this, we are all learning and it is important to take part”. 
 
Racing takes place on an American style track at Täby, with a turf and dirt course, where they manage to keep racing going in the winter, by adding salt to the dirt track and by harrowing the track 24 hours a day through the winter months. The dirt track is 1742 metres, while the turf course is 1595 metres round. There is also an inner, figure of eight, steeplechase course.
 
”This may not be Newmarket or Chantilly”, Bendik says, ”but the training facilities are good, and remarkably consistent. I rarely feel the need to go to inspect the track in the morning before working my horses. And you know, small as this team is, we have a hard working and dedicated group of people here. But it’s also costly to keep racing going 12 months a year. I know one of the guys working night shifts on the harrowing, and he just told me that he burns around 500 litres of diesel every night. That’s a lot of money you know!” Racing goes ahead in freezing temperatures, as low as 10 to 15 degrees Celcius below zero, when riding weights are put up by a couple of kilograms to allow more clothing for the riders. 
 
When asked about racing horses on dirt and turf, Bø is quick to point out that ”you get surprises all the time, but there are dirt type runners and there are turf type runners. I do not think any horse can be equally effective on both surfaces. I prefer turf, but when I have a horse winning a nice race on dirt, I love the sand”, he smiles, ”and without it – where would we be?” 
 
He took two runners to Lingfield Park in England last November, when his domestic Listed winner Maybach finished tenth in the Churchill Stakes. ”It was an experiment”, he reflects, ”but Maybach ran better than his finishing position may suggest, beaten just 6 lengths behind Nayyir, when carrying just two pounds less. After all, Nayyir used to be a Group One horse. My other horse, the Argentinean bred King Nov, was unplaced in a competitive sprint handicap. We felt that he was given a tough weight bgut he was not disgraced, and I went home believing that we can take horses to England and win. I was very impressed by the Polytrack, it is far less demanding than our conventional dirt track. We will be back but, mind you, taking these two horses from Stockholm to Lingfield did cost 70.000 kronor all told (approximately £5000)”.  
 
When Maybach won the Listed Nicke Memorial at Täby two months earlier, the reward was nearly £11,000, which is half of what Nayyir earned in the Churchill Stakes but more than the runner-up’s share in the Lingfield contest. And for the Nicke Memorial, Maybach was simply walked for about three minutes from his trainer’s stable to the paddock. 
 
”The best races in Scandinavia have good purses”, Bendik explains, ”so it makes little sense for us to ship our best horses abroad during periods when we have opportunities for them at home.”
 
As an example, the Stockholm Cup International and Täby Open Sprint – both Group Three status – were both worth €88,398 to the winner last year. On the same Sunday, Longchamp staged their ”Arc” trails, including the Group Two events Prix Niel and Prix Foy, both worth only €68,400 to the winner. 
 

Still, Bendik Bø hopes to be able to campaign more horses internationally, from his base at Täby Galopp. ”We have the knowledge, we have the horses, and we have the ambition, also among the owners, to do just that”, he says, ”and I certainly have the will”.  We knew that. 

Tom Tate - we profile the Yorkshire trainer

"I am a developer of horses, and all my horses are for sale”. These words, by Tom Tate, soon give you a balanced view of the Yorkshire trainer when you first meet him. Tate, who has 36 boxes at his two farms in Tadcaster, may come across as a very careful, conservative man. But he is also a gambler.

”It is not always economically wise”, he says, “but, yes, I own a few horses myself. I often buy yearlings hoping to pass them on to my clients or sell them on to others when they have raced a bit”. Tate is not a ‘factory type’ of trainer but improving the product, increasing the value of horseflesh, is very much a part of his job. And racing them on anything but turf to achieve the goals, is seldom, very seldom, an option.

A former amateur jumps rider for 22 years, who partnered some of Tony Dickinson’s best chasers, such as Silver Buck, Badsworth Boy and Bregawn, switched his business interests from cars to horses. Originally from Leeds, Tate tells us how he, like so many in this sport, had a very early start to what was to become a career and a lifestyle. “I was competing at pony shows from about eight”, he explains, “and I was a competitive show jumping rider as a teenager, but moved my attention to racing as soon as I could. Which was a bit late, as I wanted to get my business going first”.

Tate set up as a trainer in 1969, first as a permit holder, training only his own horses. Married to Michael Dickinson’s sister Hazel in 1972, he soon became involved in better horses and his family is horse people through ad through. “My sister Frances Walwyn is a keen endurance rider”, he says, “I don’t know why, but she enjoys that, and has won abroad. We are an equestrian family”. Tate’s two sons, Richard, a business man, and James, a veterinarian working for Mark Johnston, are both amateur steeplechase riders.

The Yorkshire man, who sent out the 7-year-old Welsh Emperor to win the Hungerford Stakes (G2) at Newbury and go very close to winning the Prix de la Foret (G1) at Longchamp this year, has what he calls “a small, but very specialist operation. We have excellent facilities, with two miles of grass gallops, an indoor riding school and an all-weather gallop. ”

“I have everything I need”, he says.

With his background as a jumps rider, Tate first trained hurdlers and chasers. “I still prefer jumping”, he says, “it is more of a sport, but we now have nearly 80 per cent flat horses. Flat racing is the reality of the business, jump racing is not as economically viable.”

Tate never considered turning professional in the saddle. “I was having my businesses at the time, in the motor retailing trade, and never thought about becoming a jockey. Nowadays, however, horses are my business.”

The team is relatively small but may expand. “My maximum number of horses is now 36”, Tate says, “but I have started thinking about having more boxes built. Since I have gone flat racing it has all changed, it is a different job, really, as there is more turnover. We have gradually edged towards the flat. The jumping is closer to my heart but it does not compare with the flat from the business aspect. We also always get some jumping horses from the flat team because I buy big, strong horses – some of them are too slow for the flat!”

Tate has no particular geographical preference when it comes to buying horses; “I go to all the major sales”, he explains, “I buy yearlings mainly. I also like the German horses, and have bought around twenty or thirty horses at the Baden-Baden sales over the past three to four years. The best one is a horse called Gardasee, who is quite a good hurdler”. The 4-year-old Gardasee, a son of Dashing Blade, finished fourth in the Fred Winter Juvenile Novices’ Hurdle (LR) at the Cheltenham Festival this spring.

“There are some nice horses from Germany, they are tough, solid horses from good family and they stay well. France have a big staying breed as well, people should not be surprised when the English buy all their jumps horses. I am a big fan of French bred horses too. Normally I buy at Deauville, although I got involved with the AQPS people down in the middle of France, and got very impressed by their approach. This is the organisation for non-thoroughbred horses, but they are thoroughbreds really - in a separate stud book. They are a fine type of horses, and often cheaper. French horses are cheaper flat and jumps, it is only the upper international end of the market which has a different value.”

The 36 horses trained at Castle Farm stables are mainly racing for private owners, “most of my owners are millionaires”, Tate says with a smile, “as I stand here today I have four or five good owners and I have managed to get them all a Group class horse or a winner at a big meeting. We have not gone into the racing club or syndicate market. It all began with jumping of course, Lo Stregone, one of my best chasers, was among the favourites for the 1997 Grand National, won 13 races. We also had a Tingle Creek winner, called Ask Tom, another I bought as a young horse. My objective is to find a young horse with a future, and be working long term. To be able to do that, you must have a very good relationship with the owners. As sometimes you do not hit it very sharp. My owners are also close friend.”

My father in law, Tony Dickinson, was a very good judge of a horse, and he was who I learnt from first. It is very hard to explain what you are looking for in a horse, or what you like. I have never used a bloodstock agent, by the way, always bought my horses based on my judgement.  Sometimes I buy horses with a fault that I think, or at least hope, the horse will be able to live with. There are very few perfect specimens. You need a certain financial strength in this business, but time and time again we have seen that finding a top horse has little to do with money.

“Welsh Emperor is the best horse I have trained, since switching to the flat six years ago. Before him, Another Bottle would probably be the best.”

Welsh Emperor, who was an 8,500 guineas yearling, has won 10 of his 48 races to date. Another Bottle, a top end handicapper, won five races.

Tate feels that the training of flat horses is totally different to training jumpers. “Jumpers are a much bigger beast, and financially it is quite an act of faith o own a jumper, as it takes longer before you get an idea of the horse’s ability, and even longer before you get some results. With flat horses, you get an idea when they are yearlings, and you can get a result for a client within months. It is much more decisive, whereas jumping is still a little bit of a labour of love.”

All Tate’s horses go out for at least an hour to an hour and a half for their daily training, flat horses and jumpers. They also spend much time out in small fields or paddocks. One can’t do that daily with every horse but Tate says he will do it if I can. Welsh Emperor, for instance, spends most of his mornings outside. Such luxuries are seldom possible for trainer with 100 horses or more. The expansion here will not go further than to around a team of 50 horses, which Tate feels is a manageable number.

“This year I buy 15 yearlings”, he says, “but 20 would be a good number. I am interested in quality, not quantity, and I am interested in good value - and getting Group horses”.

Tate’s ambition is to “up the quality while we also up the quantity a bit” and get even better horses. When talking about the sport in general, he soon comments on the current situation with more poor quality horses in training. “Racing has multiplied”, he says, “giving us more moderate horses, and I do not think that is a good trend”.

Does he race his horses on the all-weather tracks?

“Well, reluctantly. I have done it but I do not like it. Nobody goes! And what suits the horse best is good grass courses. Some horses stand it better than others, but if you keep turning them out on these artificial surfaces, they do suffer from strains on their joints.”

Tate is comparing all-weather racing to racing exclusively on turf, and is adamant that turf is much better. When we move on to talking about the North American circuit, he says: “I only know dirt racing through my brother in law Michael Dickinson, who tells me that the attrition rate out there is diabolical. Of course, they will improve the situation by racing on artificial surfaces, because it is better than dirt. But you cannot beat good turf courses. In these islands, we can grow good turf, which is not possible everywhere in the world, and it would be a big, big sin if we all go to all-weather racing. It would be a lazy man’s way, really, and no cheaper, because they do wear out and need replacing. You can’t kid yourself, but obviously there is a place for it. Some horses are very well suited by all-weather tracks, but there needs to be a good, sensible balance between turf and all-weather fixtures.”

The Yorkshire trainer feels that the importance of “keeping the sport enjoyable“.

“It is a great spectacle, and that is how it should be sold to the public, he says. “It is a red-blooded sport, it is a great day out, but racing is also a traditional sport. It wants to be a fun day, with horses at the centre of it. It lifts our lives out of the ordinary, it is a theatre thing, really, and people identify with that. One of my sayings is that everybody is a king for a day with a good horse. The owner, the trainer, the jockey, and the groom – even you, if you backed him!”

Tate is northern regional chairman of the National Trainers’ Federation. On the day after we visit Castle Farm Stables, the yard has one runner at Nottingham and one at Huntingdon. Both will run without Tate present, as he has a federation meeting. “It takes up quite a bit of time, really”, he smiles, “and this is a job nobody wants!”

So, why did the Tadcaster trainer take it? “Because it is important, and the sport is bigger than me. Also, I felt that, with many years of experience, I had something to offer. Someone was needed when I went into this role and I have been involved in racing all my life. I have enjoyed it, I am enjoying it, and I want to give something back”.

Next year, Tate will be the president of the National Trainers Federation, and he is very passionate about the work trainers are doing. “It it at a developmental stage”, he explains, “and unless we do a proper job, racing is in danger. Our sport is at the mercy of commercial forces. This will not necessarily produce good results for the thoroughbred. There seems to be a lack of understanding of the sport, at the BHB / BHA. Take an example, we are now experiencing a severe lack of two-mile chases in the program book. So, I have to make a lot of phone calls, take everyone’s view, get them across, explain the situation, and try my best to improve it. Yes, it does take up a lot of time.”

Any spare time for this trainer is spent on skiing trips in the winter, “normally to Zermatt”, and he is also a hunting man, “I nowadays particularly like grouse shooting when I get the opprtunity”, he explains, “ I do not get a lot of spare time but I enjoy doing what I do.” Well, a day at Castle Farm Stables, after spending a day with Tate’s small, very relaxed team, one can tell. Everyone, be it on four or two legs, is enjoying the daily routines – often a key to success.

Valfredo Valiani - we profile the successful Italian trainer

Valfredo Valiani (46), the man who discovered Electrocutionist, trains around 50 horses from his base in Pisa, Italy. In love with his motherland, he admits to having had thoughts of moving his operation abroad, to England or France perhaps.

 ”But I am getting older, it would be tougher to move now”, he explains. He wants to run more horses abroad though. His raids abroad have been very selective and successful. Two runs in England have resulted in two Group One wins. ”When I have the right horse, I like to race internationally”, Valfredo says, and soon reveals his views on how racing is developing in Europe these days. How does he see the current state of affairs?

”If you are talking about the horses”, Valiani reflects, ”I think European racing is doing very well. The quality of our horses is world class, something global results clearly show. If you are talking about the situation of our sport, however, I think it is going quite badly. ”

”England apart, not many have been putting money into the game in serious attempts at attracting new faces at the tracks. That is our main problem. I am not saying it is wrong to have people in betting shops but we must try to get them from the betting shops to the tracks. Hopefully, when they experience this great spectacle they will want to come back. We are missing crowds at the tracks. Unless this is addressed, it will come back to us in a negative way. In fact, it already does. Therefore, I think that our Jockey Clubs, our associations and most of all our racecourses must do better. If the big heads in racing don’t work together, races will soon be much worse than now. The only way to stop this is that owners, trainers, breeders and jockeys get together, face the racecourse ownerships, trying to work together. Unfortunately, in Italy this is almost impossibe.  We are trying to do it now. Earlier this year, I went to a dinner with Max Hennau and Jim Kavanagh, where we had the president and vice president of the breeders’ association, a prominent owner, a big bloodstock agent and the president of the European Breeders’ Association present. We tried to socialise and discuss our problems. 

”Up to a certain point, the trainers’ problems are also the same problems owners and breeders experience. Organising a good spectacle is the main thing, we must give the racing fans a top class leisure product, and together we can do just that. We all believe that the European Trainers Federation is very important. If we make the ETF work properly, we can become very influential. To do that, we should increase and expand our meetings to include all countries, and work together. We must work as a team in Europe, and representatives from each country must work locally. Racing people should not be overtaken by administrators from outside the sport. I believe racing people are the right people to run our business. Well, as you know, that is not preciseley what is happening everywhere, is it?”

”In Italy, UNIRE is run by people who are mainly political, not people with the right knowledge on racing. The main problem for a trainer, is that he who works harder and tries to be serious and professional, is not properly rewarded. Much too often, hard work makes little difference.” 

So, with strong views on how racing should be run, and a desire for change in Italy, how seriously have Valiani been considering a move to a bigger playing field?

”Unless I should get a good offer to go to Newmarket or Chantilly, I intend to stay in Pisa”, he says, ”I love my country, as does my wife Sveva. Our five-year-old son Vittorio Guiseppe is important to me, he is my hobby if you like. Really, my hobby used to be going on long riding treks in the coutryside, on riding horses, not thoroughbreds. But there is little time for that. When I can get a break I love travelling, and normally we go away in January, seeing other parts of the world is both important and relaxing. This year we went to Mauritius and Morocco.”

Racehorse trainers do not have much spare time and for Valfredo the free hours he gets is dedicated to his family. 

”I spend more and more time with my son”, he says. Is litte Vittorio Guiseppe going to step into his father’s shoes one day? ”He has ridden of course, he has a pony”, Valfredo explains, ”but we live upstairs in the yard and I think he has too many horses around him right now. Therefore he is not all that interested. A situation I am quite happy about. I hope he is not going to become a trainer – at least not in Italy, I would rather see him becoming a soccer player or something like that”, Valfredo laughs. Although he is a prominent player at home, with international success, it is clear that he sees better conditions abroad. 

Valiani has no hesitation when asked which is the best course in Italy. ”Definitely Milan”, he assures us, ”it is big track, and it is well developed, with a 1000 metres straight. You can run races over 2400 metres with just one bend, like at Newmarket. It is a severe racetrack, where the best horse usually wins. I prefer to run my horses there.” 

Valfredao was introduced to racing by his father, who was a teacher riding in amateur races in Italy. ”He became a steward, and later on he was president of the Italian stewards”, he explains, ”he put me on a horse for the first time when I was three. From about seven or eight, I was competing in show jumping. This continued until I was 14 and rode my first throughbred – I fell in love with him from day one. I switched to racehorses almost overnight and became the youngest amateur riding races in Italy in 1974. I rode quite a few flat races, won three times and had good fun but I am too tall. Riding was never going to become a career.  I always wanted to be a trainer. ”

It was also his father who sent the young, tall amateur rider to Newmarket ten years later, to learn from working with Luca Cumani. Valfredo spent two years with the Bedford Lodge handler, and experienced top class horses like Bairn, Commanche Run and Free Guest. ”Frankie Dettori had just come over from Italy too, and we both learned a lot from Luca”, Valfredo tells us. ”After the years in England, I went to work as assitant to Richard Cross in Los Angeles for a year, and I went on to work with preparations of yearlings in Lexington in 1986.”

After spending over three years learning abroad, Valfredo returned to Italy to set up as a trainer in 1987. His first horse, a colt named Swalk, was owned by Luca Cumani and Doctor Boffa, of Fittocks Stud. Many horses have passed through his hands since, but there is no doubt which is the best he has had in his care;

”I discovered Electrocutionist when he was very young, as he was bred by an owner of mine”, Valfredo tells us, ”he wanted to sell him, and I really liked him a lot. At the same time, Mr Earle Mack, an American ambassador, had asked me to find him a yearling. He bought him privately and, as you know, Electrocutionist proved to be an excellent investment. ”

Does Valfredo prefer buying his horses as yearlings?

”Yes I do”, he says, ”I like to get my horses as yearlings, and I tend to buy late developing types. I hate to say this but I have been better with middle-distance horses, not so much with sprinters. A trainer should be able to train all kinds, but this is still true – I like to buy horses with a future as older horses, horses with scope - and I am not a trainer of juveniles. I like to give them time. As an example, by the 1st of August this year I had sent out only one juvenile runner. I have a nice bunch of young horses in my yard. Hopefully, there is a future Group One winner among them. ”

Valiani trains around 50 horses and owns a few himself. ”I don’t like it, but I do own some”, he says, ”they are for sale, from time to time I buy to sell on, sometimes it works out, sometimes not, one has to take the odd gamble.” 

He buys horses mainly in Italy, England and Ireland, where he found a smashing daughter of Lahib back in 1997.  We have been lucky before Electrocutionist came along”, he says, ” Super Tassa, who won the Prix Corrida in France and the Yorkshire Oaks in England, was a real bargain. I found her at Fairyhouse, and paid only 1800 Irish pounds for her.”

Valiani tells us that he has an ambition to campaign more horses abroad. ”I like to run my horses in Italy, and if a horse is good enough, I like to send it to Newmarket or Chantilly to prepare for races there. I fly up and down when we are getting the horse ready for a big event.”

Having prepared for his training career by working around the world, Valiani now trains for owners from North America, England and France, though most of his owners are Italians. Individuals own the majority of the horses. Racing syndicates and racing clubs are yet not playing a big role in Italy, he explains: 

”The problem with the Italian man is that his attitude is to own the horse outright, not share it with someone else. Partnerships are a good thing, in my opinion, and we are really working on this. Racing partnerships is also an excellent way to attract people from outside the game, as partnerships give members a smaller risk but should give them the same fun”. 

From being an amateur rider as age 14, soon to become too tall to pursue a career in the saddle, Valiani has worked his way up the training ranks in Europe, and he is now one of the most respected in his trade. Where would he have ended up in life, if training had not been an option? 

”Probably a cowboy”, he laughs, ”I grew up in the Grosseto, a small place in the countryside, where people used horses every day – much like the North American cowboys. Well, if I had not become a trainer maybe I would have been a vet now, however. I thought that I wanted to become a vet, but I soon decided that what I really wanted was to work closely with horses full time. I studied for three years, though did not get very good results. I was spending too much time fooling around with horses!”

Pia Brandt - a Swedish trainer taking on the giants of Chantilly

Paul Nolan - from complete beginner to leading National Hunt trainer in 10 years

It is at times assumed that a background in horses is almost essential for anyone to succeed at training but one individual that is certainly putting paid to such preconceived notions is Paul Nolan.

Nolan (37) is now firmly established as one of the leading National Hunt trainers in Ireland and his rise through the ranks has been nothing short of remarkable when one hears that a decade ago his experience with horses was minimal at best. From Enniscorthy in Wexford in the south eastern corner of Ireland, Nolan hails from an agricultural tradition. 

“I came from a completely agricultural background. The family had 150 acres and were sheep and tillage farmers. I was involved in farming myself but I might as well have been picking blackberries. Farming was a total waste of time, it was completely non-profitable. There was no way that my parents could make a living off it and that I would be able to rear a family off it as well,” he reflects.

For one that lacked a traditional grounding in racing, Nolan has certainly made up for that over the last eight years and has managed to make his name in the hugely competitive amphitheatre of Irish National Hunt racing. In winter when racing is down to three or (at most) four fixtures a week, the standard at even the most ordinary of race meetings can be very high and it is in this environment that Nolan has had to make his mark.

It was about ten years ago that his thoughts began to turn away from farming but things could have turned out very differently for him. “I was very nearly going to go to Australia but it was the love of hurling (one of Ireland’s national sports and one where Nolan represented his county with distinction at the highest level) and the fact that I don’t like straying far from home which kept me here”.

Having taken the decision to stay at home, he then decided to put an interest and liking for horses to practical use. A six month spell with vet Tom O’Shea and a year with top trainer Jim Bolger gave Nolan the experience to set out on his own. Despite starting from humble origins, his talents didn’t take long to elevate him to the forefront of the Irish jumping scene.

“When I came home we started out with two point-to-pointers. I was charging only a minimal amount and the owners were supplying the oats but both horses won for us. Then we moved up to ten and now we have between 60 and 70 in training,” he says. 

It is almost exactly eight years ago that Nolan sent out his first winner on the track. The horse in question was Nibalda, a Kambalda gelding that cost Ir2,300gns and obliged in a two-and-a-half mile Leopardstown maiden hurdle. 

“Nibalda wasn’t expensive but horses don’t know what they cost and I certainly wouldn’t turn away a horse on account of what they cost”.

In fact, Nolan’s preference for buying horses is to see that the relevant individual has a good front leg: “The front leg and the shape of it is very important. I don’t like jumpers being back of the knee, you’ve got trouble keeping them sound and they don’t last as long as other horses. You like a horse to walk well but the front legs are so important. They are the wheels and ninety percent of horses lose time on the track if they are not right”. 

After Nibalda’s success, Nolan continued to do well with inexpensively bought horses but his success over the last four seasons has enabled him to train a better standard of horse and thus compete at a higher level. It is by now a regular occurrence to see his representatives make more of an impact in the country’s top jumping races. 

To have one’s first winner at a track like Leopardstown is a significant boost for anyone’s career but the victory that has been the cornerstone for much of Nolan’s success was that of Say Again in the 2002 Galway Hurdle. 

The week long Galway festival is undoubtedly one the most important weeks in the year in the domestic racing calendar and indeed Galway Hurdle day regularly attracts the biggest crowd of the year to a racing fixture in Ireland. Nolan could not have picked a better stage for one of the biggest winners of his career and it was after this success the size of his string began to increase significantly towards what it is today.  

Say Again, Cloone River and Accordion Etoile are three of the best horses Nolan has trained and all three are traditional National Hunt types. Their trainer has also done well with useful ex-flat recruits but it is the jumping bred horses that have provided him with much of his success. “They stay more honest to the game for longer,” remarks the Wexford-based handler.

However, Nolan notes the mindset of many owners coming into racing is now making life that bit more difficult for National Hunt-bred horses as the emphasis has shifted on to producing results as quickly as possible.

“National Hunt horses are being broken earlier to be that bit more forward and patience is hard to come by as people want answers as soon as possible. You are better off telling owners that their horse isn’t going to run for a year because it is so backward rather than building up people’s hopes and then trying to explain where things went wrong”.

A feature of Nolan’s successes has been the involvement of his family and his brother James serves as assistant trainer: “He’s a key man. He’s great to work and loves his job. My father plays a very important role and I can’t say enough about Brendan my head man. He’s been with me since the start and is top class”.

Ask the trainer about what he thinks are the most important aspects of training racehorses and the response is instantaneous – health and fitness. The brittle nature of the thoroughbred and the ephemeral nature of racehorse training are already well documented and they are perhaps no more evident than during the winter months of the national hunt season.

“It’s so hard to keep a horse right and keep him fit. It terms of their health, the time I spent working with a vet was certainly help but you have to try and keep them sound as well. Flat trainers do very little different to jumping trainers but the National Hunt is much harder on their bodies and limbs. I also think it is very important to keep them in the right frame of mind,” he comments.

As personable, amiable and helpful an individual as one could ever meet, Paul Nolan has done exceptionally well to make his way to prominence in the National Hunt world. Interestingly when asked as to what was the most difficult aspect of embarking on a career as a racehorse trainer he comes up with a very refreshing response.

“The worry of failure and not doing well. People said that we were crazy and that we didn’t know what we were getting into. Thankfully luck was on our side and we are now making a living out of it and hopefully we will continue to be able to do so”.

Similarly, when asked about his ambitions for the future the trainer adopts the understated approach that has been the hallmark of his career and has brought him to where he is now: “If I could keep in the top ten trainers in the country I’d be happy”.

Conventional wisdom and traditional beliefs dictated that somebody like Paul Nolan would struggle to make an impact but his talents have shone through to make him one of Ireland’s brightest training recruits. Big races and high profile successes, such as that of Dabiroun at last year’s Cheltenham festival, have already come his way and his is a name that we will be hearing much more of in years to come.