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A good read if anyone hasn't already seen it.
author image
Peter Thomas
Senior features writer
Sir Mark Prescott: "I never wanted to have a family"
Sir Mark Prescott: "You've got to be lucky"
Credit: Edward Whitaker (racingpost.com/photos)
In the first of a five-part weekly series, Peter Thomas talks to the veteran trainer about the horses who have shaped his long and illustrious career
Looking at Sir Mark Prescott today, elder statesman of the Newmarket training fraternity, nigh on universally respected, with a Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe winner recently to his credit, it's hard to imagine he was ever anything but the finished article.
On the walls of his Heath House yard hang a series of slate tablets recording the finest hours of the yard where he first took out a licence in 1970. They look very grand, but closer inspection reveals the horses inscribed on them to be something of a mixed bag, tracing back from Arc heroine Alpinista, through a slew of big handicap successes and a smattering of Group 1s, all the way back to those who ran up sequences in lowly grades to advertise the expertise, if not the firepower, of the trainer.
They have all been proud moments, but they tell a tale not of uninterrupted glory but of struggles that were overcome only by native cunning, meticulous application, hard graft and a slathering of good fortune.
The horses made the boy and the man, from his first pony onwards, but the man is also proud to have made the horses, drawn the best that could have been expected from them, whatever their level of ability. He chipped away for so many years at a reputation for doing well with ordinary beasts and the ones he has chosen for this list carried his career to new heights.
"I hope people looked at me differently as I went through these phases of my career," says the now 75-year-old, reflecting on everything from his educational and inspirational first pony, through his sequence-setting trailblazers to the high-class juvenile filly Hooray and the world-beaters that have gained him due recognition.
"I got lucky early on, made the most of placing two tough horses," he says. "It's like teaching schoolchildren. They may not be all that good but you have to find out what they're good at.
"Then we got lucky with a couple of really good handicappers, and I think Hooray stopped me getting typecast.
"Really, though, you have to be lucky, and I've been lucky that the good ones were owned by the right people, the good owner-breeders, so I didn't get any pressure, and the best ones almost all delivered for us.
Sir Mark Prescott and Alpinista after the Yorkshire OaksYork 18.8.22 Pic: Edward Whitaker
Sir Mark Prescott with Alpinista - his best horse "by some margin"
Credit: Edward Whitaker (racingpost.com/photos)
"So often you talk to trainers and they tell you the best horse they've ever had and you've never heard of it, but we've been lucky in that the good ones have got through, one every five years or so, right up to Alpinista, who was the best by some margin and, after a slow-burn start, never put a foot wrong and always ran a bit better than everybody expected, which was great."
Is there a gap in the Prescott list? One thing that would put the icing on his cake?
"You'd like to have a good colt come from those owner-breeders, that's what's missing, a proper Classic horse," he ponders. "I haven't spotted him yet but he may be lurking out there. Like Jeremy Tree, who never trained a Derby winner and then handed over to Roger Charlton, who then had two in one year, I may be leaving a couple for William [Butler, his patient and long-suffering assistant]."
Here are the most memorable horses to have turned up in Prescott's fascinating and well-lived life.
Gidgit
He was my first pony. He was marvellous and he'd jump anything. I remember he was a bit hot and he'd get in a bit of a state if we were hanging around, and then he'd go, and his heart was always the other side of a fence, so mine tended to be there as well. They always say out hunting that your heart's got to be on the other side of the hedge, otherwise why should the horse come, but with us I think it was the other way round.
There was a lovely old man who came out hunting in Devon and he didn't want to jump too much, so he said: "Now then boy, you and that little pony, you just follow me."
He and I would jump the little things that we could, but he understood where foxes were going to go, so we'd trot up the lane and down a stream and we'd arrive some time before all the people crashing and thundering around. I'd say the old boy taught me about handicapping, saving yourself, and the little pony taught me about going.
Monarain
He was my first ride, at the age of 16, and he won, trained by Sid Kernick, who I owe everything to. He was 12, he'd won a point-to-point but never under rules, and he was 100-7 in a three-horse race on rock-hard ground at Wincanton.
Tony Biddlecombe, Terry's older brother, rode the favourite, who slipped up on the top turn, leaving Piers Bengough on the second favourite, and myself, and I remember I went up on his inside when there was absolutely no need to because there were only two runners.
Going to the last I was thinking, 'I'm winning, I'm winning'. Apparently Mr Kernick was in the stands saying: "He's going to fall off, he's going to fall off," but we won, and he came and greeted me, pushed his trilby on to the back of his head and said: "National Velvet, f***ing nothing."
If I could have five minutes of my life again, that would be it – maybe Alpinista as well – but I'd come round the outside this time and make sure of winning, because he should have shut the door on me.
The whole thing is stuck in my mind because in other sports you start on the village green or at school, whereas in race-riding you start straight away, there and then, and you arrive at the weighing room aged 16, and all those people I'd been cutting out pictures of for my scrapbook, there they all were, sitting round.
I was paralysed with fear but my valet Robin Lord at least tried to get me dressed up properly so I looked the part. Then they said "jockeys out" and Robin had a little golf bag of whips and you'd help yourself. He handed it to me and said: "Now then, professor, left-handed or right?"
When I said right-handed, the whole place collapsed in laughter. What a bastard. I don't think I ever quite forgave him.
I had my girlfriend with me, and after the race we walked down the course to stand at the last for the next, and there was an old man there banging in divots. He asked: "What won the first, son?" And I said: "I did."
It was the best moment of my life. I thought I was the messiah National Hunt racing had been waiting for.
Spindrifter
I battled away riding and training – and it was a real battle – but then along came Spindrifter in 1980, who we bought for 10,000gns at Goffs. At least I had the wit to spot him.
We had a German girl called Gabrielle that year and she weighed plenty, but he could get up the hill with her on board, no trouble at all, so even I worked out he could go a bit.
Then we had our big gallop with Neville Callaghan, which we always used to do, and he flew, so he went to Hamilton first time up in March, and he won – me having a two-year-old winner in March!
I said to his owner, Graeme Waters: "'You can do one of two things with this horse: you can either win a lot of races or you can probably finish second in the Windsor Castle, but you can't change your mind halfway. What would you like to do?"
He said he'd like to win a lot of races.
I had spotted, which nobody else had at the time, that there was a historical backlog of races for two-year-olds who had not won a race worth £2,500, and the penalties were all the same – if you hadn't won a race value £2,500, you didn't get a penalty. So I worked backwards and calculated that he could probably win 15 or 16 of these races, which was a world record at the time, and to his eternal credit he won 13 out of 19, and he still only got 7st 13lb in the Free Handicap, just by good placing.
They were all conditions races that closed a month in advance, so you had to be thinking all the time, but the owner criss-crossed Britain watching him run and he had a fantastic time.
There I was congratulating myself on this wonderful achievement beating all these records and then Bill O'Gorman won 16 with Provideo and Timeless Times, but Spindrifter was the pathfinder – then they changed everything and closed up the loophole.
He was just as good the next year and we were looking at the top handicaps, but then he got kicked on the gallop and broke his leg. That would be my worst day's training.
Masafi
When Spindrifter broke his leg, we went back to the same family and Mr Waters finally ended up with a horse called Masafi, who won seven handicaps in 17 days at six different courses, which was extraordinary. Pedigree had something to do with it, but you had to have the right horse, the right trainer and the right owner.
Once I'd hatched a plan for Masafi, Mr Waters was very happy to follow him all round the country for those 17 days. It was another plan that came off with an ultra-sound, ultra-tough horse. We used to jog him up at 6am the morning after he'd run, with a view to running him the next day, and he'd shake his head and off he'd go.
After that the programme book was altered again and all the single penalties were replaced by cumulative penalties, which changed things.
Pivotal and Last Second
Having these two at the same time was career-changing in a way because Pivotal became joint champion sprinter that year and Last Second was the top-rated mile-and-a-quarter filly in the world. The two of them together were the golden period for me, a different part of my career.
Pivotal won his two big races [the 1996 King's Stand and Nunthorpe] by half a length and a short-head and it was [stable jockey George] Duffield absolutely at his best. The horse and Duffield were made for each other – the horse could take it and Duffield could take it, and Duffield never, ever faltered.
Pivotal and George Duffield return after the King's Stand Stakes at Royal Ascot in 1996
Pivotal and George Duffield return after the King's Stand Stakes at Royal Ascot in 1996
Credit: Mark Cranham (racingpost.com/photos)
Last Second was completely different in that she was very fragile, couldn't take her racing and had to be held up, which wasn't so much George's natural game, but he did it to perfection.
I remember all our horses had been ill that year – we didn't have our first runner until Epsom, which took some nerve. Anyway, they finally took off, and Last Second was working with Pivotal, who had just won the King's Stand, and the happy minute with her, back in my punting days, was when I walked out on the course with her for the parade for the Coronation Stakes – she was an edgy filly – and I looked over at the bookmakers' boards and saw Last Second at 33-1.
I said to George: "You're on your f***ing own now," jumped the rail and got stuck in. We got beat a short-head by Shake The Yoke, but it was exciting.
Pasternak and Chivalry
Then there were the big handicaps for 'the boys', starting with the well-chronicled Pasternak. The plan, hatched by Graham Rock, was to run him only twice that year and win the Magnet Cup and the Cambridgeshire, and he won them both. We sat and plotted it in this living room a year in advance, and the same with Chivalry, who I think was the only Cambridgeshire winner never to run all season. "Don't f**k up the price, Prescott," was the advice.
We waited a year for the race, he worked very well just beforehand and we thought he had plenty in hand, despite going off at 14-1, but we only won a short-head from Adiemus. Phew. They won a lot of money.
I think I enjoyed Chivalry more than Pasternak, although the public thinks otherwise.
Hooray
She was great. People often think Heath House is all about stayers and handicappers but she was world champion two-year-old filly after winning the Cheveley Park by four and a half lengths.
Hooray on her way to winning the Cheveley Park Stakes
Hooray on her way to winning the Cheveley Park Stakes
Credit: Mark Cranham (racingpost.com/photos)
She could really go, she'd gallop like a frightened deer, but I never thought for one second she'd train on. She won a Listed race at Epsom at three but that was just down to placing.
Alborada et al
We had a rash of good handicappers, but since then it's been the Alborada line. I've had most of the good ones and I could never repay what I owe that family.
I've been lucky on that front. I bought Last Second with Paul Webber for Prince Faisal, so Miss [Kirsten] Rausing, who bred her with Mrs [Sonia] Rogers, sent me one that won a race, and then Alborada, who won the Champion Stakes in 2008 and 2009; and Mrs Rogers sent me Alleluia, who won six as a three-year-old, including the Doncaster Cup, and should have won the Cesarewitch but finished lame.
Alborada with Kirsten Rausing and Sir Mark Prescott after winning the 1998 Champion Stakes
Sir Mark Prescott with Alborada and Kirsten Rausing after winning the 1998 Champion Stakes
Credit: Edward Whitaker (racingpost.com/photos)
So, because I bought Last Second I got Alleluia, I got Alborada, I got Albanova and Alpinista, who was the best I've ever had. When your luck's in!
That's the thing: you've got to be lucky.
author image
Peter Thomas
Senior features writer
Sir Mark Prescott: "I never wanted to have a family"
Sir Mark Prescott: "You've got to be lucky"
Credit: Edward Whitaker (racingpost.com/photos)
In the first of a five-part weekly series, Peter Thomas talks to the veteran trainer about the horses who have shaped his long and illustrious career
Looking at Sir Mark Prescott today, elder statesman of the Newmarket training fraternity, nigh on universally respected, with a Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe winner recently to his credit, it's hard to imagine he was ever anything but the finished article.
On the walls of his Heath House yard hang a series of slate tablets recording the finest hours of the yard where he first took out a licence in 1970. They look very grand, but closer inspection reveals the horses inscribed on them to be something of a mixed bag, tracing back from Arc heroine Alpinista, through a slew of big handicap successes and a smattering of Group 1s, all the way back to those who ran up sequences in lowly grades to advertise the expertise, if not the firepower, of the trainer.
They have all been proud moments, but they tell a tale not of uninterrupted glory but of struggles that were overcome only by native cunning, meticulous application, hard graft and a slathering of good fortune.
The horses made the boy and the man, from his first pony onwards, but the man is also proud to have made the horses, drawn the best that could have been expected from them, whatever their level of ability. He chipped away for so many years at a reputation for doing well with ordinary beasts and the ones he has chosen for this list carried his career to new heights.
"I hope people looked at me differently as I went through these phases of my career," says the now 75-year-old, reflecting on everything from his educational and inspirational first pony, through his sequence-setting trailblazers to the high-class juvenile filly Hooray and the world-beaters that have gained him due recognition.
"I got lucky early on, made the most of placing two tough horses," he says. "It's like teaching schoolchildren. They may not be all that good but you have to find out what they're good at.
"Then we got lucky with a couple of really good handicappers, and I think Hooray stopped me getting typecast.
"Really, though, you have to be lucky, and I've been lucky that the good ones were owned by the right people, the good owner-breeders, so I didn't get any pressure, and the best ones almost all delivered for us.
Sir Mark Prescott and Alpinista after the Yorkshire OaksYork 18.8.22 Pic: Edward Whitaker
Sir Mark Prescott with Alpinista - his best horse "by some margin"
Credit: Edward Whitaker (racingpost.com/photos)
"So often you talk to trainers and they tell you the best horse they've ever had and you've never heard of it, but we've been lucky in that the good ones have got through, one every five years or so, right up to Alpinista, who was the best by some margin and, after a slow-burn start, never put a foot wrong and always ran a bit better than everybody expected, which was great."
Is there a gap in the Prescott list? One thing that would put the icing on his cake?
"You'd like to have a good colt come from those owner-breeders, that's what's missing, a proper Classic horse," he ponders. "I haven't spotted him yet but he may be lurking out there. Like Jeremy Tree, who never trained a Derby winner and then handed over to Roger Charlton, who then had two in one year, I may be leaving a couple for William [Butler, his patient and long-suffering assistant]."
Here are the most memorable horses to have turned up in Prescott's fascinating and well-lived life.
Gidgit
He was my first pony. He was marvellous and he'd jump anything. I remember he was a bit hot and he'd get in a bit of a state if we were hanging around, and then he'd go, and his heart was always the other side of a fence, so mine tended to be there as well. They always say out hunting that your heart's got to be on the other side of the hedge, otherwise why should the horse come, but with us I think it was the other way round.
There was a lovely old man who came out hunting in Devon and he didn't want to jump too much, so he said: "Now then boy, you and that little pony, you just follow me."
He and I would jump the little things that we could, but he understood where foxes were going to go, so we'd trot up the lane and down a stream and we'd arrive some time before all the people crashing and thundering around. I'd say the old boy taught me about handicapping, saving yourself, and the little pony taught me about going.
Monarain
He was my first ride, at the age of 16, and he won, trained by Sid Kernick, who I owe everything to. He was 12, he'd won a point-to-point but never under rules, and he was 100-7 in a three-horse race on rock-hard ground at Wincanton.
Tony Biddlecombe, Terry's older brother, rode the favourite, who slipped up on the top turn, leaving Piers Bengough on the second favourite, and myself, and I remember I went up on his inside when there was absolutely no need to because there were only two runners.
Going to the last I was thinking, 'I'm winning, I'm winning'. Apparently Mr Kernick was in the stands saying: "He's going to fall off, he's going to fall off," but we won, and he came and greeted me, pushed his trilby on to the back of his head and said: "National Velvet, f***ing nothing."
If I could have five minutes of my life again, that would be it – maybe Alpinista as well – but I'd come round the outside this time and make sure of winning, because he should have shut the door on me.
The whole thing is stuck in my mind because in other sports you start on the village green or at school, whereas in race-riding you start straight away, there and then, and you arrive at the weighing room aged 16, and all those people I'd been cutting out pictures of for my scrapbook, there they all were, sitting round.
I was paralysed with fear but my valet Robin Lord at least tried to get me dressed up properly so I looked the part. Then they said "jockeys out" and Robin had a little golf bag of whips and you'd help yourself. He handed it to me and said: "Now then, professor, left-handed or right?"
When I said right-handed, the whole place collapsed in laughter. What a bastard. I don't think I ever quite forgave him.
I had my girlfriend with me, and after the race we walked down the course to stand at the last for the next, and there was an old man there banging in divots. He asked: "What won the first, son?" And I said: "I did."
It was the best moment of my life. I thought I was the messiah National Hunt racing had been waiting for.
Spindrifter
I battled away riding and training – and it was a real battle – but then along came Spindrifter in 1980, who we bought for 10,000gns at Goffs. At least I had the wit to spot him.
We had a German girl called Gabrielle that year and she weighed plenty, but he could get up the hill with her on board, no trouble at all, so even I worked out he could go a bit.
Then we had our big gallop with Neville Callaghan, which we always used to do, and he flew, so he went to Hamilton first time up in March, and he won – me having a two-year-old winner in March!
I said to his owner, Graeme Waters: "'You can do one of two things with this horse: you can either win a lot of races or you can probably finish second in the Windsor Castle, but you can't change your mind halfway. What would you like to do?"
He said he'd like to win a lot of races.
I had spotted, which nobody else had at the time, that there was a historical backlog of races for two-year-olds who had not won a race worth £2,500, and the penalties were all the same – if you hadn't won a race value £2,500, you didn't get a penalty. So I worked backwards and calculated that he could probably win 15 or 16 of these races, which was a world record at the time, and to his eternal credit he won 13 out of 19, and he still only got 7st 13lb in the Free Handicap, just by good placing.
They were all conditions races that closed a month in advance, so you had to be thinking all the time, but the owner criss-crossed Britain watching him run and he had a fantastic time.
There I was congratulating myself on this wonderful achievement beating all these records and then Bill O'Gorman won 16 with Provideo and Timeless Times, but Spindrifter was the pathfinder – then they changed everything and closed up the loophole.
He was just as good the next year and we were looking at the top handicaps, but then he got kicked on the gallop and broke his leg. That would be my worst day's training.
Masafi
When Spindrifter broke his leg, we went back to the same family and Mr Waters finally ended up with a horse called Masafi, who won seven handicaps in 17 days at six different courses, which was extraordinary. Pedigree had something to do with it, but you had to have the right horse, the right trainer and the right owner.
Once I'd hatched a plan for Masafi, Mr Waters was very happy to follow him all round the country for those 17 days. It was another plan that came off with an ultra-sound, ultra-tough horse. We used to jog him up at 6am the morning after he'd run, with a view to running him the next day, and he'd shake his head and off he'd go.
After that the programme book was altered again and all the single penalties were replaced by cumulative penalties, which changed things.
Pivotal and Last Second
Having these two at the same time was career-changing in a way because Pivotal became joint champion sprinter that year and Last Second was the top-rated mile-and-a-quarter filly in the world. The two of them together were the golden period for me, a different part of my career.
Pivotal won his two big races [the 1996 King's Stand and Nunthorpe] by half a length and a short-head and it was [stable jockey George] Duffield absolutely at his best. The horse and Duffield were made for each other – the horse could take it and Duffield could take it, and Duffield never, ever faltered.
Pivotal and George Duffield return after the King's Stand Stakes at Royal Ascot in 1996
Pivotal and George Duffield return after the King's Stand Stakes at Royal Ascot in 1996
Credit: Mark Cranham (racingpost.com/photos)
Last Second was completely different in that she was very fragile, couldn't take her racing and had to be held up, which wasn't so much George's natural game, but he did it to perfection.
I remember all our horses had been ill that year – we didn't have our first runner until Epsom, which took some nerve. Anyway, they finally took off, and Last Second was working with Pivotal, who had just won the King's Stand, and the happy minute with her, back in my punting days, was when I walked out on the course with her for the parade for the Coronation Stakes – she was an edgy filly – and I looked over at the bookmakers' boards and saw Last Second at 33-1.
I said to George: "You're on your f***ing own now," jumped the rail and got stuck in. We got beat a short-head by Shake The Yoke, but it was exciting.
Pasternak and Chivalry
Then there were the big handicaps for 'the boys', starting with the well-chronicled Pasternak. The plan, hatched by Graham Rock, was to run him only twice that year and win the Magnet Cup and the Cambridgeshire, and he won them both. We sat and plotted it in this living room a year in advance, and the same with Chivalry, who I think was the only Cambridgeshire winner never to run all season. "Don't f**k up the price, Prescott," was the advice.
We waited a year for the race, he worked very well just beforehand and we thought he had plenty in hand, despite going off at 14-1, but we only won a short-head from Adiemus. Phew. They won a lot of money.
I think I enjoyed Chivalry more than Pasternak, although the public thinks otherwise.
Hooray
She was great. People often think Heath House is all about stayers and handicappers but she was world champion two-year-old filly after winning the Cheveley Park by four and a half lengths.
Hooray on her way to winning the Cheveley Park Stakes
Hooray on her way to winning the Cheveley Park Stakes
Credit: Mark Cranham (racingpost.com/photos)
She could really go, she'd gallop like a frightened deer, but I never thought for one second she'd train on. She won a Listed race at Epsom at three but that was just down to placing.
Alborada et al
We had a rash of good handicappers, but since then it's been the Alborada line. I've had most of the good ones and I could never repay what I owe that family.
I've been lucky on that front. I bought Last Second with Paul Webber for Prince Faisal, so Miss [Kirsten] Rausing, who bred her with Mrs [Sonia] Rogers, sent me one that won a race, and then Alborada, who won the Champion Stakes in 2008 and 2009; and Mrs Rogers sent me Alleluia, who won six as a three-year-old, including the Doncaster Cup, and should have won the Cesarewitch but finished lame.
Alborada with Kirsten Rausing and Sir Mark Prescott after winning the 1998 Champion Stakes
Sir Mark Prescott with Alborada and Kirsten Rausing after winning the 1998 Champion Stakes
Credit: Edward Whitaker (racingpost.com/photos)
So, because I bought Last Second I got Alleluia, I got Alborada, I got Albanova and Alpinista, who was the best I've ever had. When your luck's in!
That's the thing: you've got to be lucky.
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