i admire racehorse trainers but ....

​Although there must be a huge buzz to training a racehorse to win any race, with a trainer’s first ever winner achieving as a great an adrenaline rush, I imagine, as the trainer who wins the Cheltenham Gold Cup, the buzz, even for those who regularly dine at the top-table, must be paid-for in disappointments and on occasion tragedy. The adage ‘to win a small fortune at horse racing it is advisable to start with a large fortune’ must be true but for the select few.
In his book ‘Training the Racehorse’ Lt-Col P.D. Stewart D.S.O. wrote. ‘The ‘boss’ has harder work, more worry and less thanks for his efforts, especially when he is unsuccessful, which he often maybe through sheer bad luck and from no fault of his own’.
Every trainer from Nicky Henderson and John Gosden to the permit trainer with one-horse and a point-to-pointer can relate to Lt-Col Stewart’s sentiment. Sir Mark Prescott, tongue-in-cheek allayed to sorry experience, said something along the lines of ‘racehorses spend a great deal of their time trying to injure themselves, with their riders seemingly doing their best to aid and abet them.’ Sir Mark put it more eloquently and with more feeling, obviously. Incidentally, I eagerly look forward to his autobiography.
Racehorse trainers work without a safety-net. They are self-employed, their income regulated by the loyalty or whim of their clients and by the wheel of fortune. Their day does not end with the leaving at night of the last employee and every meal can be interrupted by an owner wanting news of his horse. These days it needn’t be an owner as the biggest owners now employ racing managers or at the end of the phone might be a bloodstock agent or journalist. The top trainers may these days employ many assistants and secretarial staff but the buck always stops with the man or woman whose name is on the trainers’ licence. It is always the trainers’ head that is on the block. And apart, except for those lucky enough to be able to afford two-weeks in Barbados to freshen the senses before the run-up to Cheltenham or Royal Ascot, the job is 7-days a week.
Why more than a few racehorse trainers do not suffer mental breakdown each season would mystify Paul McKenna. 
Training the racehorse is not a science, though science is often brought into the equation to help, and sometimes hinder, diagnose and fix medical issues. Training is also not an art. The assistant trainer can pick up dos and do nots but when it is his name on the licence the job comes down to feel, to faith of eye, to an instinct that can only be taught through long experience. Training manuals like the one Lt-Col Stewart published in 1952 can only point the way, to relay experience gained with certain horses, to establish principals that deal with the mechanics of training. There can be no instruction for knowing if a horse will improve for a longer distance, a certain racecourse configuration or when a horse is ready to run for his life. 
The racehorse trainer with 200 horses in his stables might make 200-times the number of mistakes in a season than a trainer with a team of 10 and when you have 200 horses at your command the outside world is less likely to notice errors of judgement. If he or she makes a mess of one horse that is only 1/200th of the string: if the trainer with only 10-horses makes a similar mistake that is 1/10th of his earning capacity thrown to the wind. Trainers, in the main, fly by the seat of their pants.
When Lt-Col Stewart trained he had no artificial gallop, no horse-walker, no equine swimming pool, no hydro treadmills, no veterinary science the equal of the National Health Service, even if it is so very much more expensive to access. It is why a trainer can now say, or boast as I feel it is a subtle form of saying ‘how clever I am’, ‘the horse loves being fresh, he’ll go straight to Cheltenham, Aintree or Royal Ascot, wherever. Back in the day, Neville Crump did not have the same luxuries, nor did Fulke Walwyn or Cecil Boyd-Rochfort or even Noel Murless.
The racehorse has not changed but the way it is trained has, and not necessarily for the betterment of the sport, in my opinion. I am in no way offering up criticism of Paul Nicholls, his record speaks for itself, but as I must give an example, I will use Clan Des Obeaux. Prior to the King George at Kempton this season the horse was reported to be ‘in the form of his life’ and to be fair he looked magnificent in the parade ring, with the trainer stating no fears about the ground. Yet though the horse ran well to finish second, it didn’t win. Would he have won if he had run at Haydock as he had the previous year, when he also didn’t win at Kempton?
All hypothetical, of course. But I do believe if a trainer is lauded a ‘genius’ for winning any race with a horse after a long layoff, they should also suffer criticism when a deliberate policy of ‘he goes well fresh’ does not succeed. This policy or modern-fad is anti-racing and anti-competitive and it is one of the reasons for small fields in big races and perhaps a downturn in racecourse attendance. Trainers have a responsibility to the sport that ultimately pays their bills; it is time some form of persuasion was used to get them to step up to the mark.