Ralph Beckett's School of Life

Spend a morning on the gallops with Ralph Beckett and you could end up with more than just the natural shot in the arm that comes with observing racehorses at close quarters in the English springtime.

Barns full of bluebloods. Well, that's a given now, particularly on the back of a pretty spectacular 2024. Sunshine is not always a given, but on this fine morning it has been turned to full beam, lighting up the rolling turf which envelopes this haven on the edge of Salisbury Plain.

Bluestocking, last year's Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe winner, has stepped out of that verdant spotlight but behind her remains the Irish Oaks winner You Got To Me, Breeders' Cup winner Starlust, and that old warrior Kinross, with the durability of a steeplechaser and the speed to mix it at the best Flat tracks around the world. Behind these generals come the troops whose metier is yet to be established. Their progress up the ranks will depend on the keen oversight of the man charged with their education.

At Kimpton Down, every day is a school day, and not just for the horses. In the 15 years since Beckett and his wife Izzy bought the property from the family of Toby Balding and moved from Whitsbury, the trainer has set about learning the ways in which he can best adapt the turf and woodchip gallops at his disposal for the honing of young Thoroughbreds. Even unwitting journalists are given a lesson in agronomy while waiting for third lot to appear over the brow.

Beckett doesn't just provide education for others. His searching mind spurs him on, when time allows, to pay visits to colleagues in the training ranks to see what nuggets he can extract from them.

“I try to spend a morning in Newmarket with a trainer every year. I'm always fascinated by what other people do,” he says. 

In February he had a mini-tour of Ireland, visiting Henry de Bromhead, Willie Mullins, Aidan O'Brien and Jim Bolger. 

“Henry is a very good pal of mine, from my time with Arthur Moore, so that was terrific,” Beckett continues. “And I really enjoyed going to Closutton and then Coolmore, and to Jim Bolger's as well. If people want to come and spend a morning here, I'm always open to seeing people, because you always pick up something from somebody somewhere, don't you?”

When the initial entries for the Derby were published in February, Beckett had 12 colts entered. That has been revised to six after the initial scratchings on May 6, and he has 10 fillies remaining in the Oaks, in which he last year saddled four runners. These are not Ballydoyle-like quantities but, still, this represents a significant amount of firepower to be aiming towards Epsom in a bid to add the Derby to his victories in the Oaks (twice), Irish Derby, Irish Oaks and St Leger. 

Early-closing races can allow owners to dream awhile, but with each confirmation stage there is an expensive decision to be made, and a judgement by the trainer as to the degree of latent talent harboured within each horse.

“Often you'll come into the start of the year with a mile two-year-old maiden winner with the right pedigree, in that he or she looks like he or she will stay primarily. And as long as their work is up to scratch in a broad sense, I'll make a decision on whether I think they'll handle it psychologically,” Beckett explains. 

“Whether they'll manage for me to run them in a trial first up and then go on from there. And if we don't think they're going to cope with that for whatever reason, then we go a different route. And often, of course, as you are cranking horses up, bits can fall off as well. And so that decision can be taken out of your hands.

“For example, there's a couple of three-year-old fillies, That's Amore, by New Bay, won a Newbury maiden, and Revoir, by Study of Man, who won a Nottingham maiden at the back end. Both of them I have no problem about running in the trials. They'll both cope with it and then if we have to cut our cloth a different way in the coming months, that's fine.”

Experience, too, provides its own form of education. “There'll be others that over the years, and you're looking back, you've run something in a trial and it ran okay,” he continues. “And then you've run in the Oaks because you thought it'd cope, and it didn't, because it couldn't go around Epsom. So the heavy-topped ones or the heavy-shouldered ones I'm less inclined to roll the dice with than I would've been previously.”

Revoir, bred by Julian Richmond-Watson at Lawn Stud, is from the family which gave the trainer his first Oaks winner, Look Here, back in 2008. That filly's half-sister Look So has also provided the stable with the G1 Prix Royal-Oak winner Scope and is the granddam of Revoir, who still races for her breeder, the former TBA chairman and long-time supporter of Beckett. 

“We always majored in middle-distance or staying fillies, and part of that was thanks to Look Here,” Beckett says. “For me, I enjoy training Starlust and Kinross as much as I enjoyed training Talent and Simple Verse. But it's terrific, if I've become known for training that type. It's not a perception that I necessarily sought. It is one we ended up with.

“But I'm delighted that people want to send that type of horse to us. Because the more you do it with that type of horse, the more straightforward it becomes, perhaps. And presumably for some owners there's a comfort in knowing that we have plenty of that type.”

Arc winner Bluestocking faces the cameras | Scoop Dyga

For some years, Beckett, in partnership with bloodstock agent Alex Elliott, ran a race-to-sell investment syndicate The Lucra Partnership. Runners included the G2 Royal Lodge Stakes winner New Mandate, but the expansion in numbers in his stable has brought this to a pause.

“We have wound Lucra up for the time being, but we'll do it again,” he says. “It wasn't for lack of interested parties. It was just more just the way the yard's gone in the last couple of years – we probably had around 120 horses at that time.

“But we really enjoyed doing it, because there was a goal there, and it didn't matter whether the horse had run twice or 10 times, it was a case of getting it to the point where we could then take an offer for the horse. I really enjoyed doing it and Alex is very good at buying that type of horse. We had 10 partners in that particular outfit who absolutely had a great time doing it. We had plenty of action on the racecourse and it was a big part of why we're training the number of horses we are now, there's no doubt about that. And I'm grateful for that.”

Kimpton Down and a back-up yard at Lambourn, where Beckett first started training, house around 200 horses in training. In tandem with success for the owner with a more commercial imperative, the trainer's results for owner-breeders have also spurred this growth, including last year's Arc victory for Juddmonte's Bluestocking among five Group/Grade 1 victories for the stable in 2024. 

The year-round international and all-weather racing programme has changed the way that modern-day Flat yards operate, but Beckett did at least find pause to reflect on a year that culminated in the Breeders' Cup Turf Sprint victory of Starlust at Del Mar, some 16 years after Muhannak had become his first winner at the meeting. It was recently announced that the son of Zoustar will take up stud duties in Australia after running in the King Charles III Stakes at Royal Ascot.

Ralph Beckett and Rossa Ryan celebrate victory in Del Mar | Racingfotos

“During the winter we don't run very many horses from the beginning of December on purpose, and I think during the winter I was able to look back and enjoy it,” Beckett says. “My family enjoyed it as well, and I'm really pleased about that. That, for me, was the bit I remember most about it, in that they were there and were part of it.”

Happy with his lot, he is not, however, shortsighted when it comes to the general state of the racing industry. Forthright in his views on how British racing, and the British Horseracing Authority (BHA) in particular, could do better, Beckett has served his time as president of the National Trainers' Federation (NTF), often speaking up in support of his colleagues. 

“We've lost 17% of trainers since 2010,” he says. “It's always been tough at the bottom, we know that, but there has to be a mid-range. There seems to be a loss of the people training between 40 and 80 horses. There were plenty of people who were making a good fist of it and coming up with good horses from time to time. Part of the reason the sport works is because a good horse can come out of anywhere. And once that stops, we lose some of our identity. And we've lost enough of it already, frankly.”

He continues, “I'm incredibly fortunate. I'm very aware of that. When I started as president of the NTF, I felt that I wasn't going to sit on the fence. I was going to say exactly what I thought all of the time and then when I finished doing it, I'd know that I'd done my best for everybody, not just for the bit that suited me. 

“I thought that was really important that nobody could say, 'Well, he was just looking after himself.' William Haggas, Mark Johnston and John Gosden before me, who are all still involved, they all took that view as well. They did their best for everybody and I admired them for it.”

The BHA remains in a state of flux, with acting chief executive Brant Dunshea having replaced Julie Harrington, who left in December 2024, and David Jones  installed as interim independent chair following the death of Joe Saumarez Smith in February. Lord Allen of Kensington will become the new BHA chair from June 1. Beckett says that he would like to see more radical changes. 

“The political side of it, I find that the problem is that everything comes from the top, and it does in any organisation. But the fact is that the people at the top don't know what they're doing, and because they don't know what they're doing, the last thing they're going to do is actually appoint somebody who does know what they're doing because then they get shown up even more.

“And it's got to the point now where John Ferguson is doing his best on the BHA board, but he's been shouting in a gale for two or three years, and Luca Cumani for three years before that. Both men have been worn down by it and I don't blame them. 

“The BHA executive came up with an idea of cutting 300 races from the programme about three years ago and Julie Harrington and Joe Saumarez Smith, who I trained for, torpedoed their own executive's initiative. And at that point, the BHA, under the current arrangement, was effectively finished, because how can you ask your own executive to do something and then throw it under a bus because, in Julie's words, 'it was so divisive'? It was only divisive because the racecourses didn't want it.”

Beckett continues. “I'm not optimistic until the board changes. It must change. And once we stop being run by [Arena Racing Company CEO] Martin Cruddace, then I'll start being optimistic about it.

“My own view is that the Jockey Club needs to leave the RCA [Racecourse Association] and go and stand next to the BHA. Now, I'm not confident about both these things happening, but one of them could. The Jockey Club could have it in them to go and back the BHA, and that's what they should be doing.”

Despite his impassioned views, Beckett maintains that there is just one thing that drives him on, a quarter of a century after he first set out his stall as a trainer. 

“Nice horses,” he says. “I'd love to train another Epsom Classic winner – that goes without saying. It would perhaps be my primary objective because I haven't had one for 12 years. So I would dearly love to find another one, but having good horses is really my only objective. Finding them is the hard part.”