I was told to work in a supermarket!
Haynes riding high after ignoring career advice
ALICE HAYNES stuck to her guns when her school’s careers advisor tried to send her to a supermarket to stack shelves for work experience, and she insisted she wanted to work with horses.
Her first three runners at Royal Ascot this week — Remarkable Force (Coventry Stakes on Tuesday), Lady Bullet (Albany Stakes, Friday) and Josies Kid (Palace of Holyroodhouse handicap, Friday) — less than 18 months after she started as a trainer are an indication of the steely determination that runs through Haynes.
‘They wanted to send me to a supermarket. They thought that you were never going to make a career out of horses,’ said Ascot-born Haynes, who celebrated her 31st birthday yesterday.
‘I wanted to go into racing and be a jockey. I had my mind set and that is what I am, a strong-minded individual. If I set my sights on a target I try my best to get it. In the end it wasn’t much of a fight. I just said I was not going.
‘I did Pony Club but was not from a racing background, So I wrote a letter to Henrietta Knight. She wrote back and I went down there for my work experience, then school holidays and after I left school.’
Knight was the trainer of the three-time Cheltenham Gold Cupwinner Best Mate, who was coming to h end of his career when Haynes first arrived at he yard. ‘It was great,’ she said. ‘I was 16 years old schooling horses upside AP McCoy. I can even remember the horse — Cruising River — going down the line of fences. You think you’ve made it! I hadn’t, of course. But you learn so much.’
Haynes continued to build her knowledge by working for trainers Mick Channon and David Simcock, with a brief stint in Australia before she set up her own pre-training operation, breaking-in young horses before they are sent to yards.
Haynes also rode 11 winners as a jockey, but she was determined to train in her own name. She got her licence on February 1 last year, starting with 12 horses at the Cadland Cottage Stables at the base of Newmarket’s famous Warren Hill gallops.
Despite taking the plunge when the Covid-19 pandemic was causing economic turmoil, Haynes has already proved a success story.
Her 10th runner — Act of Magic at Wolverhampton on March 12 last
year — was her first winner. Nineteen more followed last season and Haynes already has 25 winners this year.
She now has 40 horses — 25 of them two-year-olds — and an expanding list of owners, including the Amo Racing operation of football agent Kia Joorabchian, who owns the unbeaten Remarkable Force, who cost £147,000.
‘What I like about Remarkable Force is that he had to have a battle in his second race at Musselburgh. He will have learned a lot,’ Haynes said.’
Lady Bullet, another of Haynes’s Ascot runners, ‘is exciting and very laid back’. Haynes said: ‘It’s unbelievable having two unbeaten two-year-olds going into Royal Ascot. You have to pinch yourself.
‘People think because you are from Ascot you have a silver spoon in your mouth. I don’t. Everything we have in the yard, me and everyone on the team has worked for. It hasn’t been given on a plate.
‘There was no big money backer. When I pre-trained. I saved quite a bit of money but it has all gone into this. You take nothing for granted. You have to make the most of what you have got and keep climbing.’