It was nippy up on the downs at the Sharpridge gallops and trainer Alan King wished he’d brought a jacket. It’s just the kind of weather, a chilly wind and still sunny, that heralds the intense exercise regime ahead of the new National Hunt season – also known as the ‘jump season’.
Alan King has one hundred and fifteen racehorses in training at his main Barbury yard and the nearby Sharpridge yard and they’re mostly hurdle and jump horses. Collectively it’s known as Barbury Castle and is one of the country’s top training establishments.
Alan started at Barbury in 2000, a year after he took out his training licence. In the last five seasons he’s notched up 220 winners over hurdles and 120 winners over the jumps – winning total prize money for his owners of £4,609,575.
He employs about fifty people – a substantial employer in the area. The horses are ridden out everyday in three batches: 0700, 0900 and 1100. They do some circuits of the paddock – walking and trotting to “make sure everything’s working and to get warmed up.” Then it’s up to the all-weather gallops.
It takes about three months after their summer break to get horses fit to race again – “turning the fat into muscle.” And they’re not cheap to feed – on top of the grass, there’s a daily supplement of fourteen pounds of hard feed.
Keeping a horse in training is expensive – about £20,000 a year. Alan welcomes the partnerships and syndicates among the owners for whom he trains. It means more people can experience the glorious ups (and sometimes the downs) of owning a race horse.
He’s sanguine about the future of Britain’s racing industry. The main problem, he told Marlborough News Online, is that “the prize money in Britain has plummeted. The big races apart, you’re sometimes racing for as little as £1,500 whereas in France it starts at about £10,000.”
Alan heard recently of an agent who bought nine horses at the French sales for British owners and seven have stayed to be trained in France. Alan says it is this sort of development that has given rise to the saying in racing circles “You race in Britain for the glory. You race abroad for the money.”
At least two regional racecourses – Hereford and Folkestone – have been marked down for imminent closure by their owners. He’s backing the campaign to save Hereford – “It’s a smashing track” – and is optimistic it will succeed.
The yard has three regular jockeys: Robert ‘Choc’ Thornton and Wayne Hutchinson. The third, Gerard Tumelty is a conditional jockey – that’s equivalent to flat racing’s ‘apprentice jockey’. There are three more conditional jockeys on the books: Charlie Huxley, Peter Hatton and Ciaran Mckee.
What about the new jump season which starts in earnest in late October? Among the stars at Barbury are: West End Rocker which won the Becher Chase at Aintree but fell at the second in last year’s Grand National. Alan says he’ll never be going back to Aintree but will stick to the courses he likes – flat and left-handed, like Newbury and Warwick.
Earlier this month, the five-year-old chestnut Henry San won at Stratford. Hold On Julio may well get a run in Newbury’s Hennessy Gold Cup after a successful switch from hurdle to steeplechase races.
Then there’s the grey Medermit who did well first at the Cheltenham Festival and then at Aintree, coming fourth in the Betfred Bowl Chase.
Quite a lot is riding on another grey, Smad Place who in March came third in Cheltenham’s World Hurdle – behind Big Buck’s and Voler La Vedette: “He’ll get a crack at Big Buck’s – an amazing horse but who’s getting on a bit. Someone has to take him on.” Big Buck’s became the only horse to win the long distance World Hurdle four times running.
Walk On won well at Exeter last December and during the season was placed twice at Newbury, did well at Cheltenham, but was pulled up in the Scottish Grand National in April.
Among the new horses at the yard is the Irish horse Hot Whiskey (note the ‘e’ for Irish whiskey.) He’s a chestnut gelding bought by Alan for the football manager Harry Rednapp after Rednapp’s horse Bygones In Brid was killed in a fall at Taunton in March.
Grumeti won January’s Triumph Hurdle Trial at Cheltenham and two months later came third in the Triumph. He’s the yard’s big hope for the year at Aintree. Katchit won the Triumph Hurdle in 2007 and the Champion Hurdle in 2008 – becoming the first five-year-old to win it since 1985 and the first winner of the Triumph to take the Champion Hurdle crown since 1968.
Or you can keep your money in your pocket. But that’s not anything like as much fun as going to the races and having a flutter.
Alternatively if you want to see the horses up-close there are Stable Tours at Barbury Castle and Sharpridge yards on certain days – and they like the yard’s normal days, start early. They do include a full English breakfast: To contact, click here to send an e-mail or visit the website here
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