New Year Full of Fresh Promise for Tregoning

In the final approach to Whitsbury, splashing along ever narrower lanes, a grim winter sky had suddenly sagged and dissolved into shreds of mist, hanging over the ditches and glowing in the reprieved sun. And, entering his yard during the bustle of evening stables, it was not hard to perceive a parallel relief in the fortunes of Marcus Tregoning.

Here is a trainer whose proven talents have been plunged too long in the shadow of past achievements. But not only has the year now drawing to a close admitted new beams of light-however fitfully, given the injury that confined his best horse to a single start at either end of the campaign. It also renews the familiar winter rituals, of welcoming and breaking young stock, with the buds of springtime already seeming more copious than in many a year.

And that's because Tregoning's first and most important patron, Sheikh Hamdan, has restored heartening new life to their old association. In the six years since he left the Sheikh's Kingwood Stables outside Lambourn, to start afresh in a Hampshire yard rented from the Harper family of Whitsbury Manor Stud, Tregoning has been grateful to receive a handful of yearlings annually from Shadwell.

These included Mohaather (GB) (Showcasing {GB}), whose impressive rehearsal in the G3 Greenham S. qualified him as one of the favourites for the 2,000 Guineas until derailed by his setback. He shaped extremely well when resurfacing in the G1 Queen Elizabeth II S., fifth having been last off the bridle in gruelling conditions, and remains very lightly raced. But the real excitement is that he will be accompanied, in 2020, by as many as 16 Shadwell youngsters of authentic Classic pedigrees.

“This summer Sheikh Hamdan came and visited for the first time since I came here, and it was like old times,” Tregoning says. “My old Range Rover wouldn't start, but I've always got on with him and we have a banter and a laugh. Mohaather probably boosted things a lot, but anyway he said he thought he should send us some better horses-and he has. It's a real big kick for us, and lovely to have some of the old families again. For instance there's a Frankel colt out of Rumoush (Rahy), who we trained. So it does feel like we're turning the corner a little bit.”

Tregoning, after all, has spent so many years matching his skills with animals of commensurate calibre-through all those years learning his trade, under the late Dick Hern, and then in his own right, whether with Sheikh Hamdan's blue-blooded champion Nayef (Gulch) or the Derby winner he found for 16,000gns, Sir Percy (GB) (Mark Of Esteem {Ire}).

“It was a big gamble coming here, but I think it's paying off,” he reflects. “We started with 40 or so, which was a bit of a shock to the system. Renting is obviously very expensive, wherever you go, and those Saturday horses, I'm afraid, do help an awful lot. And a lot of people flock to the young trainers. As they did to me, when I first started.”

He names two trainers. One, from the new generation, is in growing demand. Tregoning suspects that the horses are being drilled too hard, because they never seem to sustain prolific initial success. The other, a good deal older than Tregoning, has seen and solved every problem known to Thoroughbreds; and reliably maintains the appetite and development of his horses. “Lovely guy, lovely yard, and he's seen it all before,” Tregoning says, shaking his head. “And completely out of fashion.”

But even during the slowest of recent years, Tregoning never permitted himself self-pity. Because it was not just horsemanship he learned from Hern, who was notoriously evicted form the royal stables after being confined to a wheelchair by a hunting accident. Sheikh Hamdan kept the faith, and Hern promptly repaid him with dual Classic winner Nashwan (Blushing Groom {Fr}) and the sensational sprinter Dayjur (Danzig).

“He was just amazing,” Tregoning recalls. “Never got down. It was a great thing for me to see that, how he would fight in a corner. The worse the situation became, the better he was.”

Even before the accident, Tregoning was familiar with Hern's stiff upper lip. Certainly he could never get him to expand on his wartime experiences, in North Africa and Italy, beyond the improvisation of tracks to race captured German horses.

“He did say once that when you've experienced the smell of burning flesh, you might not want to talk about it again,” Tregoning recalls. “But he always believed you have to stay positive, that you can always turn things round. In fact he was better with his back to the wall.”

And, conversely, his mentor actually became more difficult when good horses came through. In his heyday, Hern would then withdraw into that remote, empathetic zone between trainer and animal; and it was only personal disaster, leaving him so much more dependent, that accelerated the education of his stalwart assistant.

“He wouldn't have taught me anything if he hadn't been in a wheelchair,” Tregoning says. “Which is a shame, because he was a brilliant teacher. He was fascinated by conformation. When I was pupil assistant, and a horse was lame, he'd say: 'Go and get Marcus. Right, get on that horse.' So I'd have to ride it up and down the yard. 'Which leg is it lame on?' By God, you didn't dare get it wrong. So, touch wood, I feel like something of a vet when it comes to soundness. Because he trained me. It's funny, when you've been with someone so long, I suppose you start thinking the way they do.”

Hardly one to suffer fools, Hern had Tregoning by his side for 14 years. “And not a single day was wasted,” Tregoning stresses. “Every hour you spent with him you were learning, and he really was just the most brilliant trainer.”

Sheikh Hamdan would share the benefits, the sorcerer training one champion out of Height Of Fashion (Fr) (Bustino {GB}) in Nashwan, and the apprentice another, in Nayef. There was a similar transfer of the baton with Sarayir (Mr Prospector), another of the great mare's foals, and her daughter Rumoush-whose son, as already noted, is now at Whitsbury.

The first foal out of Height Of Fashion to enter Hern's care had been Unfuwain. “I remember the first time he came out in front of us in the yard,” Tregoning recalls. “'Look at that, Marcus, a son of Northern Dancer, what do you think?' 'Quite a heavy horse, isn't he?' 'No! He's fine!' 'Do you think his feet are rather big?' 'Absolute nonsense, Marcus!' But it turned out to be his problem, that he felt the ground, that concussion through his feet. Years later, when Dick retired, he said: 'Well you were right about one thing, Marcus-about that horse's feet.' I couldn't believe it. He'd never said a thing, but it had obviously stuck in his mind all those years.”

Tregoning had a ringside seat, of course, when Nashwan's famous springtime gallop ignited an ante-post bushfire. One senior lad made £60,000 on the Guineas-Derby double.

“They wanted to give him a cheque, but he didn't have a bank account,” Tregoning recalls. “So he said he'd come back in a couple of days and to have the cash ready. And he took in all these carrier bags, and then walked across the street to the bank, and opened an account. His father was a vicar in Wales and I think he bought his house for him.”

Tregoning himself backed Nashwan along the rails on Derby day, only for one bookmaker to disappear after the race, owing him £3,500. Hern was horrified-not so much by the “welsher” as by the idea that his impoverished assistant should have staked enough to win such a sum. “Anyway he got the money back for me,” recalls Tregoning with a wry grin.

He provoked equal alarm in his friend Richard Gaskell, whose father Dickie worked the rail for Ladbrokes for 25 years, when announcing that he intended the bet of his life on Bronze Angel (Ire) (Dark Angel {Ire}) going for his second Cambridgeshire.

“He said I was mad, in a race like that,” Tregoning recalls. “But I said no, he's absolutely flying. He was a funny old horse but he had those moments. I think a lot of horses do, they peak, don't they. He always used to peak in the autumn, just as it got a bit colder. He was an incredibly tricky horse to train, never the soundest.”

Arguably posterity might assess a dual Cambridgeshire winner as no less a credit to Tregoning than his various Group 1 scorers.

“If it was just about getting an animal to the races, fit, anybody could do it,” he reflects. “Getting a horse to peak, it's feel. The oddest thing, really. You just get it. And very often the longer you can wait, the better. Not forcing them, that's the thing. If you can train them to peak without forcing them, mentally and physically, you're in a better place.

“Look at Dayjur. Dick Hern always knew he was a sprinter, of course he did. But he also knew-having had the likes of Bold Boy-that if he pressed him too soon, he'd have blown his brains. As it was, once they got him sprinting, he'd jump out and settle beautifully.”

That instinct evidently extends to the sales ring. It has been striking, even as Tregoning's orders and budgets have diminished, to see him unfailingly at the rope in the Tattersalls ring, monitoring the traffic against his diligent preparations. That, after all, was how he found a colt to emulate Nashwan's Classic double at the very bottom tier of the market.

“I'd looked at Sir Percy and thought him a lovely horse, and that I'd go to 50 for him,” he recalls. “And then hope to find someone to buy him. So when he was going for what he was, I just had to risk it. But I ended up holding him for long time. Just before Christmas one man said he'd have him, only to change his mind a month later. I was going to keep the horse myself but then Victoria Pakenham rang out of the blue, saying they'd seen him as a foal, but that he'd made too much, and was there any chance they could buy a share? Well, we had school fees to pay. But if they were lucky, then how lucky was I? How many others would have been prepared to turn down all that money for him, as an unbeaten 2-year-old?”

From his vantage by the sales ring, Tregoning has now been in the game long enough to lament changes in the breed. He gestures out to the darkening yard, where the great steeplechaser Desert Orchid was once stabled.

“Look how many times he ran, staying sound, and winning 34 races,” he says. “On the Flat, they're not as sound a beast, structurally. Try and find a yearling today with good feet. It's very rare now, whether it's the way they feed them or breed them. A lot of these small farms are buying fillies that couldn't breathe, or that bled, and have bred them to these commercial sires-and now they're in the chain.”

Admirers of Tregoning were as delighted by the emergence of Mohaather, attesting to his undiminished flair, as they were dismayed by his injury.

“You could see it happen in the Greenham, virtually,” Tregoning says. “He started wandering about as though something wasn't quite right. He seemed fine afterwards, but that's quite common with the sort of issue he had, with no separation of the bone.

“As it turned out, the ground would have been too firm all summer anyway. He ran a terrific race at Ascot, as a lot of people seem to have noticed, but to this point he's a Group 2 horse. We'll soon find out whether he's genuine Group 1 quality, if he stays sound. He's an easy horse to get fit, not massively big, so we'll start in the Lockinge and see how he gets on. If he has to come back in trip, that would be fine too. But if he can be a Group winner at two, three and hopefully four, then he'd have earned a stallion job somewhere.”

Hern was fortunate to have patrons like Lord Rotherwick, who obliged him with an annual cheque of £100,000 up front. Tregoning can only dream of such clients. But he is very happy with his landlords-with the 35-box main yard, a historic overflow for the babies, maintained gallops-and, of course, with the renewed support of the client he values above all others.

“We're very lucky to have Sheikh Hamdan sending me horses,” he says. “And I'm very lucky with the team I've got. Some have been with me for 18, 20 years. My biggest worry now is that we have to make sense of the whole business. Without going on about prizemoney too much, it's not the greatest help if you go up and win a race at Newcastle and find yourself basically out of pocket by the time you get home. There's no question we've the best racing in the world. So somehow we've got to make it work. We've got to be careful not to lose the thread of what we love.”

And that's something Tregoning himself has never done, even during the fallow years. “We're so grateful to get a push,” he says. “A couple of Group winners, a couple of Saturday winners, and suddenly you have a momentum that keeps going. I can see a future in it, now. And we'll give it a hell of a shot.”