The turf
Style and substance
Robin Oakley
Ihave interviewed trainers leaning over five-bar gates, surrounded by pungent labradors in the front seats of four-wheel drives and in the middle of circling cohorts of thoroughbreds on Lambourn mornings too cold for ballpoints to write. I have talked to them in morning suits at Ascot and in khaki shorts and running shoes at Brighton (yes, that was Rod Simpson). But never until I went to talk to the master of Newmarket's Diomed Stables about his hopes and fancies had I interviewed a trainer in his boxer-shorts.
Observing Ben Hanbury dressing for the day is like being a courtier at the levee of an 18th-century French monarch. The early-bird trainer, who rivals Clive Brittain as an alarm-clock for any larks unwise enough to station themselves on the Newmarket gallops, had been up soon after 5 a.m, and out with his first lot not much later. And the same kind of care that sends Diomed Stables inhabitants out into the parade ring with that characteristic extra gleam was being bestowed on the trainer himself, still pink from the shower. It started with the canary-yellow socks; then there was the smoothly fitting lilac shirt, the beautifully tailored navyblue suit and the breast-pocket handkerchief close enough in shade to those canary socks to look deliberate but not so close as to be predictable. Mrs Oakley would like me to look the same but, despite her 30 years' hard training, there is about as much chance of me attaining Hanbury-level elegance as there is of my covering the Derby course in the same time as Galileo. Oh, and the boxershorts? Blue-and-white striped, madam, if you must know.
Ben's father, National Hunt trainer Tom Hanbury, was the best turned-out man on the racecourse in his day. He left 40 Huntsman suits when he died and 50 pairs of shoes, and his son, who has never been afraid of a bit of colour, has been a racecourse landmark too. Sometimes it seems as if the style may be obscuring the substance of the man, for what is sometimes overlooked is that Ben Hanbury has trained some 900 winners. He won the Oaks and the 1,000 Guineas with Midway Lady (whom he had backed for the race at 100-1) and the Irish Oaks with Matiya. Other good Group One performers have included the bargain buy Kala Dancer, champion two-year-old in 1984, and Bin Ajwaad, who might well have won the French 2,000 Guineas but for splitting a pastern.
There really seems no reason why the Hanbury operation should not be one of those 100-horsepower Newmarket yards instead of him having to watch the Stoute first lot go by with twice the numbers in his entire stable. I suspect the trainer himself, given his record, is slightly puizled that it is not, and I share the surprise.
Some trainers can be off-putting, others shyly hope their horses will do the talking. Neither is true of Hanbury, whom I went to see because he always seems the most cheerful man on the racecourse. He fights the battle for a better deal for owners and has interesting theories about the need to make racing less stuffy. And he was certainly well prepared for his role. First there was work with Ryan Price. 'An incredible stableman. You had your arse kicked if everything wasn't immaculate, but if he'd been a general the men would have done anything for him.' Then he went to Dan Moore in Ireland, on the basis of his father's belief: 'You keep your horses in the worst company and yourself in the best.'
Ben rode L'Escargot to two bumper wins early in his career but after breaking his leg badly as a Berkshire-based rider and assistant, he came to Newmarket and worked for the top-drawer Bernard van Cutsem in the days of Park Top. After that he was determined to make it as a Flat trainer and soon showed the character to come through tough times. In his third season training he was sent more than 40 horses by shipping tycoon Ravi Tilckoo. There were 52 winners that year and he had just borrowed £300,000 from the bank to build his yard when he received a fax from Tikkoo to say the horses were all off to France the next morning because of VAT costs. Left with just three horses, Ben bought 20 more, stuck their pictures in an album and flew off round the world to find owners for them.
This season he has had a cracking consignment of a dozen yearlings from Hamdan Al Maktoum, now the stable mainstay. 'Every one of them has the potential to be a nice horse,' he says. Of the Diomed Stables inmates this year, watch out especially for Mugharreb and Nafisah. This is a trainer who knows as well as any what to do with the big guns. I hope he gets some more of the good ammunition every top trainer needs.
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