Derby special I am up against the Man City of racing, says Morrison
Hughie Morrison says it ‘is our duty to racing’ to run Telecaster in Derby against Aidan O’brien
The bunting is already out in East Ilsley for tomorrow’s annual sheep fair, but it is just possible that by then it will be honouring another type of four-legged animal: a horse called Telecaster.
For centuries, weekly sheep markets sustained almost as many pubs (17) as there were domestic dwellings in the Berkshire village. Access to the local downs also made it a good place to train racehorses and, while the sheep and all but two pubs are now gone, the horses have just about clung on.
Had Hughie Morrison, 59, from a long line of politicians, gone into the family “business” he might conceivably be a candidate for leader of the Tory party standing against Boris Johnson, to whom he was house captain at Eton.
Two of Morrison’s uncles were MPS, his grandfather, the first Lord Margadale, was chairman of the 1922 Committee for nine years, although a bigger influence, as far as the trainer is concerned, was his founding of the Fonthill Stud on the family estate.
His great, great grandfather was a “strong, radical Whig” who was very principled. “He didn’t think a peerage was a good return on capital,” recalls the trainer of the old system of buying one.
When Morrison was young, Fonthill Stud went through a golden period and his father, James, the second Lord Margadale, won the Oaks with homebreds Juliette Marny in 1975 and Scintillate in 1979. “He’d be stewarding and I’d be wandering around racecourses all day on my own aged six or seven,” says
Morrison. “It becomes a bug.” After two years as an unpaid assistant to Paul Cole, Morrison took out a licence to train in 1997, swapping his house in Lambourn with Simon Sherwood, who wanted out of training, for Summerdown in East Ilsley.
He was in his late 30s, having heeded the advice given to him as a 13-year-old at Goodwood by Henry Cecil to do “something else” first. He ran a low-energy strip-lighting business near Strangeways in Manchester and, later, a business making rubber gloves. “It helps you relate to people who own horses and people who have made a lot of money because racing can be a very quick way of dispensing with it,” he explains.
Indeed, his own willingness to save Telecaster’s owners £1,100 meant he took the colt out of the Derby in April.
“If I’d made millions in business, I’d own 25 horses rather than training them, because you soon realise training isn’t a business.”
He started with seven horses owned by his family, friends and himself. He gradually built it up to 70 and, ever since his second runner won, has always punched above his weight. His three or four jumpers a year have netted a Cheltenham Festival winner in Frenchman’s Creek, while his wife, Mary, bred Marble Arch, runner-up in the 2002 Champion Hurdle.
His successes on the Flat include two July Cups, with Pastoral Pursuits and Sakhee’s Secret. Feathers in his cap with stayers include training Alcazar to win the Prix Royal Oak at the age of 10, making him the oldest Group One winner in Europe.
Two of his biggest “successes” have been seconds: Marmelo in last year’s Melbourne Cup and Shirocco Star, the dam of Telecaster, who was a neck second to Was in the Oaks.
He has a long connection with Meon Valley Stud, which owned her. “We always try to buy their horses because we’ve done well with them,” says the trainer, who has never gone above £190,000 in the yearling market and on that occasion for a one-off order.
“I thought he [Telecaster] was bound to sell. To us, he was a beauty. I couldn’t believe he didn’t meet his reserve of £180,000, but when he didn’t Mark [Weinfeld, the owner] said, ‘Would you like to train him?’”
At two, Telecaster, named after a Fender electric guitar, had growing issues. “He was talented, but shinny [prone to sore shins],” Morrison says. “We tried to push on with him in September, but he was too nice to mess up.
“We had several conversations in March about leaving him in the Derby. Mark asked if he’d win a maiden, a trial and be ready for the Derby and I replied, ‘I doubt it’. It was logical to take him out of it,” Morrison adds, having just paid £85,000 to get him back in the race with a supplementary entry.
“Going to Doncaster for his first run, I knew Bangkok was very well regarded, but I knew we’d run well. I did think afterwards though, ‘I hope you’re not going to be like your mother and be second all your life’. At Windsor, Oisin Murphy [the jockey] made Telecaster do it and taught him how to be a racehorse. He’s intelligent – if he was thick we wouldn’t be where we are.”
Two years to the day after Morrison announced that a horse he kept for his apprentices to ride had tested positive for steroids in what appeared to be an act of sabotage (it cost a six-figure sum to clear his name) Telecaster won the Dante, the pre-eminent Derby trial.
Had this been a normal Derby for him, without a runner, Morrison would have been attending his nephew’s wedding in Stockholm. Instead, he is, to use his football analogy, “taking on Manchester City [Aidan O’brien] with a five-a-side team”. But, he adds, running Telecaster in the Derby is “our duty to racing”.