Fahey and Ribchester are ready to reach new heights at Royal Ascot
Trainer can show he is adding quality to quantity with his classy miler in the Queen Anne Stakes
For a man who was never hell-bent on becoming a trainer when he retired from being a jump jockey, Richard Fahey has made a pretty good fist of it.
Now, in Ribchester, he has what should be confirmed in the Queen Anne Stakes, the opening race of this year’s Royal Ascot on Tuesday, as not only the best miler in Europe but the champion to make him best known as a purveyor of quality rather than just a supplier of quantity.
There may be a north-south divide in jump racing but there is no such thing on the Flat if Fahey’s rapidly expanding empire at Musley Bank – he has just added another 100 acres to double its size – and the winners it produces is anything to go by.
From the top of his gallops early on Wednesday, with the sun already high over the Yorkshire Wolds, the only sign of Malton’s proximity was the crenulated church tower poking above the early morning mist.
In a maze of individual post and railed paddocks on the bank above the stables, 40 horses, which had worked a day earlier, grazed, sunbathed and rolled on their day-off.
You can walk into some yards and get clubbed by the tension. But here the happiness of horse and human is tangible. Like a lot of yards what looks like chaos, Piccadilly in rush-hour, is in fact very structured and organised and, critically for equine cheerfulness, routine. And this yard’s matey charm comes from the man at the top.
“I was buying and selling when I was riding,” said Fahey, the son of an engineer from County Louth, Ireland, reflecting on how he started. “When I packed up I ran a livery yard and a fellow who I’d ridden for, Tom Dyer, asked if I’d train a few for him. I was never that keen because the buying and selling was going well. I was making a living at it.
“But Peter Easterby advised me to get a licence and, once I was training, I couldn’t buy and sell and train, no way. So I concentrated on the training. But buying and selling using your own money is a very good grounding because you buy for value. As a trainer, if you keeping getting the right horses for your owners it keeps you busy – if you keep buying crap you go out of business.”
The first of Fahey’s five Royal Ascot winners was Superior Premium, a 2,800 gns purchase, in the 2002 Cork & Orrery Stakes. When Ribchester was bought for €105,000 (£91,800) as a yearling three years ago, it was the first time the trainer had paid six figures for one. “We still work at the lower end of the business, in the £20-30,000 region,” he said, explaining that he favours tried, tested and reliable old stallions who might be slightly out of fashion as opposed to first-season fads whose progeny, quite apart from being unproven, are expensive.
“If you gave me a million I probably wouldn’t know what to do with it all. But we buy nice, sound horses and, if you pay more, it doesn’t mean they’ll be any better and you have to remember, with all the big stud farms around, most of the really good horses never come on the market. It’s a rarity we buy one over £100,000.”
When you pin him down to how many boxes he has tucked away in various barns on that south-facing bank – there were 70 when he bought it 13 years ago – his stock answer is “over a hundred” before his straight face breaks into a knowing smile.
It is certainly well over that and when, eight days ago he had 32 runners at five different courses, what remained will not have resembled a ghost town.
“We had three winners, eight seconds, 17 either won or were placed,” he said. “A few were beaten shortheads. Some were in the same race so we were never going to have 32 winners. It was a bit frustrating that all those meetings fell on the same day but I can see why racecourses want to run at weekends.
“I’d say only two ran bad. Yesterday was more frustrating, though – we didn’t have a runner anywhere.”
His training ethos is “keep it simple, keep the horses happy and well”. Using the template established by Richard Hannon Snr; entertain your owners, run their horses often, pick the right races and do not pay too much heed to strike-rates. He has cracked the numbers game, equalling the record for the most winners in a season – 235 – in 2015.
He is only a couple of decent horses away from being champion trainer and, through Ribchester, he can prove that producing big horses for the big day comes just as easily.
“I keep reading he is the best miler in Europe,” he said. “I hope they’re right. Tuesday is a big day for us – a huge day. I hope he performs and, if he goes and performs but doesn’t win, I don’t mind.
“There is a bit of extra pressure, of course, because he’s talented and you feel responsible for that. It’s responsibility rather than pressure. The only day he’s ever let us down was in his maiden when we thought we had a good horse and he got beat. What’s more he was 8-1!”
Ribchester could be one of a dozen runners for Fahey at Ascot and, while there are no certainties, as the trainer hosed off It Don’t Come Easy, he could not disguise his liking for the Kyllachy colt that broke the juvenile track record at Musselburgh earlier this month. More like an old pony than rattling fast two-year-old It Don’t Come Easy rested his head on jockey Paul Hanagan’s shoulder, the definition of contentment.
So what will constitute a good Ascot for the popular Fahey? “One winner would be fantastic. Ascot’s massive for us, huge. It is the be all and end all. It makes all the winter work and early mornings worthwhile. But I’d like just a little bit more from it. That sound greedy? Greed is good!”
‘One winner would be fantastic. Ascot is massive for us – the be all and end all’