A master with a smidgeon of ‘luck’
TERRANCE MILLARD: REVERED RACEHORSE TRAINER
A winner of multiple races in South Africa, he died this week just short of his 90th birthday.
Revered racehorse trainer Terrance Millard claimed the secret of his success was luck – and that good racehorses simply “found” him. There’s always an element of luck in racing – and Millard did always wear his pair of lucky red underpants to race meetings – but the man’s phenomenal record strongly suggests there was a bit more to it than that.
Millard – who died this week just short of his 90th birthday – won 117 Grade 1 races, six Durban Julys, six Mets, six Gold Cups, seven champion trainer titles … the list goes on and on.
That’s why many observers call him the greatest South African trainer of the 20th century. Only Syd Garrett and Syd Laird are competition for that accolade.
I had the privilege of interviewing Millard at length some years ago. Here are some interesting facts from those conversations:
His Welsh father was a horse buyer for the British Army in World War I, who later emigrated to the Cape to became a dairy farmer and was the first to produce potato chips in South Africa.
Young Terrance was horse mad from the start. Classmates at Marist Brothers and Rondebosch schools refused to sit near him as he smelt of horse from mucking out his ponies’ stables.
He joined the Cape Hunt and Polo Club at age nine and was their youngest and, later, their oldest member.
After school he bought and sold horses in the Cape amateur equine scene, before moving to the UK and trying his hand at steeplechase riding and horse stunt work in movies.
Back in Cape Town, he spent £25 on a horse called Laddie to compete in amateur races. The six-year-old thoroughbred had a breathing problem, but Millard twigged this was an exceptional racehorse. He wheeled and dealed to get the gelding a Hobday throat op, then he applied for a professional trainer licence – which took six months. He won the 1954 Queen’s Plate with Laddie; then got third in the Met. “Laddie changed my life. I was just lucky to find him,” said Millard many years later. Perhaps.
Further progress was a little slow, but years of battling with a few inferior horses taught the young trainer a lot. He also learnt from rival Syd Garrett, who he described as “without doubt the best horseman I ever encountered”.
The first Millard Met victory came with Polar Bear in 1963. Then it was Peter Beware (1969), Arctic Cove (1983), Mark Anthony (1988), Jungle Warrior (1990) and Olympic Duel (1991).
The July champions were Tecla Bluff (1983), Devon Air (1984), Occult (1986), Royal Chalice (1988), Right Prerogative (1989) and Ilustrador (1990). There were two Millard July first-second-thirds and one first-third-fourth.
Of special pride were 16 victories in the Paddock Stakes at Kenilworth.
Apart from luck, Millard credited success to his private training facilities, including Sea Lodge which he built at Blouberg. Devon Air came to him as a hopeless case with “a huge head, bad legs and a terrible temper”. Millard fixed the British-bred mare by working her hard on nearby sand dunes and swimming her in the Atlantic shallows – then won the July and the Gold Cup in the same year.
The only time the Cape maestro ventured to Joburg was for the 1986 Sun International, which he won with Enchanted Garden, with stablemate Potomac second.
He rated Empress Club the best he ever handled. She was the last of his string of brilliant Argentinian imports – training her in the final year before he retired and handed her and the rest of his operation to son Tony and son-inlaw Geoff Woodruff.
On one Argentina buying trip, there was a spare place left on the plane as horses were being shipped out. By-then-retired Millard picked out a colt at the last minute. His name was El Picha and he won the July twice in a row.
In 37 years of training, Millard only had four stable jockeys: Freddie Heyman, Bert Abercrombie, Felix Coetzee and Mark Sutherland. “They all had a great attitude to work. There aren’t many like that today.”
RIP Terrance Millard, master trainer.