bill wightman - possibly one of the best ever trainers.

​What constitutes a great trainer? Is it the number of Derby winners? Or on the other code the number of Gold Cup or Grand National winners? Perhaps it is the accumulative number of classic and Group 1 victories? Or simply winning more races than any other trainer? Or the most prize money? Or is it the ability and dedication to tease the very best out of every horse you are given to train?
I have never fathomed why the champion jockeys title is awarded to the jockey who rides the most winners in a given season, although these days that is not necessarily a pre-requisite to be awarded the champion’s crown, yet the champion trainer accolade is based on prize money, which can often be influenced by the sheer good fortune of possessing the best 1½ -mile horse in your stable. The Derby winner usually, though not always, tops the prize money lists at the end of the season. Why is the champion not the trainer who trained the most winners, which would give far more trainers the opportunity to become champion? Or the most winners per every twenty horses trained throughout the season?
And, as a trainer, there is a certain amount of ‘being fashionable’ when it comes to binge given the responsibility of training for the select band of owners wealthy and dedicated enough to either breed from the best or buy from the best. We shall never know, of course, but could John Gosden or Aiden O’Brien win as many races with the calibre of horse that, to give one example, Bill Wightman had in his care during his long and varied career as a trainer? Or with the limited training facilities at his disposal? It is all relevant.
He is long gone now, of course, and though he came close once or twice the classic winner that might have defined his fifty or so years as a trainer never came his way. Yet though he had good winners throughout his career, over both codes, and in his training infancy, when he trained on the pony racing circuit, the overall quality of horse sent to him ensured he had to treat every horse in his care as a potential money-winner. He was the ‘professionals professional’.
His great chaser Halloween was before my time, unfortunately, though horses such as Badbury Rings and Popeswood ring bells in my hazy memory. He also trained Elan as a young horse, though he was in the care of John Sutcliffe when he won one the earliest runnings of the Schweppes Hurdle.
The horses I do remember are Runnymede, Blueit, P.C.’s Record ( I am not sure why) Queendom, Cathy Jane, Import, Flying Nelly, Walk By, The Goldstone, ( who gave Karen Wiltshire the prominence of being one of the first female jockeys to win a race) Bell-Tent, Solar, Raffia Set, King’s Ride – the list goes on.
The thing with the likes of Bill Wightman is that they are soon forgotten. Racing is a whirligig of a life; no matter who dies or retires there is always someone else to fill the space they leave in their wake. Trainers, more so than jockeys and perhaps even the staff they employ, are the shoulder at the wheel that daily turns the sport. Their investment is, or should be, total, and not even in time and commitment. But money. All but the few with a licence to train get by with less than the minimum wage. Overheads have to be honoured or there is no grub for their most needful asset, the horses under their care. And as any small trainer, upcoming or on the slide, will tell you, the expenses come from all sides, It is the trainer who must supply the buckets and feeding bowls, the stable rugs and the paddock sheets, the bridle and saddles, the brooms and feed-bins. And they all must be replaced in a given time-frame.
It is why the really good trainers of Bill Wightman’s ilk such be celebrated, why the top owners should consider helping them on occasion by sending them a horse or two. The sport, on both codes, is becoming more and more elitist, with the big battalions sharing the spoils year-in, year-out.
When given a horse of real potential, Bill Wightman always extracted the best out of them. He could train precocious two-year-olds, the backward types that needed time and patience, and he could train jumpers, sprinters, milers and stayers. He did not specialise. His first winner was at Buckfastleigh, his last at Newbury. He summed up the life of a trainer as ‘Months of Misery, Moments of Bliss’, which is the title of Alan Yuill Walker’s biography of him. The sort of book I enjoy reading; a book centred around a period of time that fashioned my love of this great sport.