The turf
Patience pays
Robin Oakley
When the future Liberal Prime Min- ister Lord Rosebery was told by the Oxford authorities that owning racehorses was not consistent with undergraduate life, he wrote home: 'Dear Mother, I have left Oxford. I have secured a house in Berkeley Square and I have bought a horse to win the Derby, your affectionate Archie.' The horse was called Ladas and it finished last in the 1869 race.
But for Liberals patience pays. Twenty- five years later, during his brief spell as premier, Lord Rosebery won the Derby with Ladas II. When critics then suggested that owning racehorses suggested a lack of seriousness, the Prime Minister retorted that he had owned unsuccessful racehorses for years without anybody complaining. The first response, perhaps, to the politics of envy.
Lord Rosebery, who won three Derbys in all with horses he had bred, was passion- ate about the turf and hosted magnificent racing parties in his redbrick Epsom man- sion. For years, sadly, his old Durdans sta- ble complex was allowed to fall into decay but though Lord Rosebery was a notably difficult owner to please he would be delighted at the new breeze which has been blowing through the old yard in the shape of 32-year-old trainer Joe Naughton.
Up on the Downs in his baseball cap and gaudy golf shirt, Joe Naughton is the epito- me of racing's new generation. The son of a former managing director of Playboy Casinos, he is firmly aware of the need to market his product: 'You can't lay back. You've got to get out and meet people.' Back in the fast-expanding yard, standing amid clusters of new boxes in what used to be a nettle patch, he proudly reels off the modern facilities that would have made Lord Rosebery's eyes pop — the solarium, the treadmill, the magnotherapy rugs that can massage a horse on the way to the races.
But on the Downs you see the authority of the traditional stableman: 'Take that one back now, Caroline. Go round again with him, Andrew.' And as we watch the string take a post-exercise pick of the lush grass back in the 45 acres of Durdans' pad- docks he is ever watchful, calling over assistant Angus McNae to check a suspect joint. 'Those forelegs don't exactly look a pair' or calling off the playing Jack Russells as they come close to the stable's star, the Group One sprint winner Hever Gold Rose.
Joe Naughton is conscious of the history about him. A fine job has been done on the once-dilapidated indoor riding school. Now it is a sand arena where the horses can come for a roll and a kick to vary their rou- tines. He believes in plenty of exercise for his horses, not too much mere walking.
His methods, partly learned from an ini- tial spell with Frankie Durr, six months at the National Stud when Mill Reef and Grundy were there, then seven years with Barry Hills, including the four at Manton when 400 winners came out of the yard, have brought results. He began five years ago with six horses, four of which he owned himself. Now there are 65. Last year be trained 32 winners of £400,000 plus in prize money; this year the target is 40 winners and prize money of £500,000. Joe Naughton has done particularly well with the Hever Racing Club, named after a Kent golf club whose name has been borne by a number of the stable's stars. He has won more than 30 races with Hever club horses since its inception in 1993, including Hever Golf Rose's victories in the top European sprint race, the Prix de l'Abbaye at Longchamp, last autumn and her break- ing of the Goodwood course record in the King George Stakes. Play Hever Golf and Go Hever Golf each won six.
The flying lady herself has had a frustrat- ing season so far, finishing second in foul top sprint races. She will go for the Nun- thorpe at York this month and for a big German sprint at Baden-Baden. Next on her schedule is a race at Taby in Sweden. After another bid for the Prix de l'Abbaye she'll go again for the big French race and then be eased off and kept ticking over for a while to be readied again for the £700,000 Sprinters Stakes in Japan in November.
It is an ambitious programme from an ambitious stable which has had a frustrat- ing run of 25 second places this year. A double at Bath last week, though, for Hever Golf Express and the useful two-miler Old School House confirmed that the Naughton horses are now hitting a hot streak. The speedy Song of Skye surprised at 25-1 at Newbury on her first outing and there are some nice two-year-olds coming along. I liked the look of Bon Guest, well-furnished sort. Among the older hors- es Joe Naughton hopes that the six-year- old mare Comanche Companion will be paying her way again in the autumn. And Yo-Kiri-B, disinclined to let herself down on the firm going at Brighton last week, will do better when the trainer can find her some easier ground. What will help her trainer go far, though, is that his is not only a stable which turns out plenty of winners. It is a stable run by a man who gets fun out of his racing and who enjoys sharing it with others.
Robin Oakley is political editor of the BBC.
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