John Gosden: the gentleman trainer

The extent of the success currently enjoyed by John Gosden is remarkable. All the more so because, while he oversees a large stable of equine bluebloods, he is the principal trainer for neither of Europe’s two dominant ownership groups, with Coolmore and Godolphin both keeping their most prized horses ‘in-house’, trained respectively by Aidan O’Brien and by Charlie Appleby and Saeed bin Suroor.

John Gosden was born into a racing family: his father John ‘Towser’ Gosden was initially a successful amateur rider over jumps and then a successful trainer at Lewes in Sussex near England’s south coast.

Sadly, Towser Gosden had to retire from training at the end of the 1965 season because of the onset of a terminal illness, saddling his final winner on the last day of the campaign when Concealdom (GB) (Damremont {Fr}) took the Manchester November H. at Doncaster. He handed over the reins at Downs House, Lewes, to Gordon Smyth before passing away 18 months later.

Towser Gosden’s final season had been a good one, not least because his string had included the high-class 2-year-old Charlottown (GB) (Charlottesville {GB}) who had ended the season unbeaten after three starts including the Solario S. at Sandown and the Horris Hill S. at Newbury.

Charlottown, a younger half-brother to subsequent two-time NZ Champion Sire and five-time NZ Champion Broodmare Sire Mellay (GB) (Never Say Die {USA}) won the following year’s Derby, trained by Smyth, ridden by 52-year-old Scobie Breasley and strapped by subsequent successful Newmarket-based trainer Michael Jarvis.

Learning from the best

On leaving school, John Gosden started his preparations for pursuing his late father’s career by enrolling as an undergraduate at Cambridge University. There he secured a degree (in economics) and a ‘blue’ (in discus and javelin). After graduating, he set about gaining the best possible grounding in the training game by enjoying stints as assistant to the most successful trainer on each side of the Irish Sea, working for Noel Murless at Warren Place, Newmarket, and Vincent O’Brien at Ballydoyle, Co. Tipperary.

Having enjoyed a halcyon summer at Ballydoyle in 1977 when the stars included Derby winner The Minstrel (Can) (Northern Dancer {Can}) and Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe hero Alleged (USA) (Hoist The Flag {USA}), Gosden headed west to work Tommy Doyle in California (while keeping a close eye on exactly what Doyle’s neighbour, the great Charlie Whittingham, was doing with his horses).

Within two years, Gosden felt ready to set up on his own. He duly applied for a trainer’s license in California in 1979. He was aged 28 and had three horses under his care at Santa Anita.

Within five years John Gosden had become one of the most notable trainers in the USA. He prepared his first champion in 1983 when Bates Motel (USA) (Sir Ivor {USA}) won a string of big races headed by the G1 Santa Anita H. before ending the year as the recipient of an Eclipse Award as Champion Older Dirt Male Horse.

The following year saw the staging of the first Breeders’ Cup Meeting and Gosden was on the score-sheet, sending Robert Sangster’s British import Royal Heroine (Ire) (Lypheor {GB}) out to win the G1 Breeders’ Cup Mile at Hollywood Park.

Royal blue beckons

Life was good for John Gosden and his wife Rachel (whom he had met at Cambridge) in Southern California and one suspects that they might have been happy to remain there indefinitely. However, the racing world was changing, one of the most notable changes being the expansion of the Maktoums’ bloodstock empire. Sheikh Mohammed’s string was growing rapidly and, notwithstanding that he was patronising some of the best trainers in the country including John Dunlop OBE, Sir Henry Cecil and Dick Hern CVO CBE, the Sheikh felt that he needed his own trainer as well.

In Newmarket, Moulton Paddocks Stables had become available for rent following the retirement of Jeremy Hindley. Sheikh Mohammed took the lease on that property and bought Stanley House Stables (formerly the hub of the racing empire of the Earls of Derby) from Gavin Pritchard-Gordon, and Highfield from John Winter.

Having received an offer from Sheikh Mohammed which he couldn’t refuse, John Gosden brought his family home to England in 1989.

Even though he wasn’t training the cream of the Maktoum herd, Gosden was soon back doing what he does best, i.e. winning big races. He bagged big sprints with the likes of Keen Hunter (USA) (Diesis {GB}), Wolfhound (USA) (Nureyev {USA}) and King’s Signet (USA) (Nureyev {USA}) as well as weight-for-age features around Europe with top middle-distance performers such as Flemensfirth (USA) (Alleged {USA}), Sheikh Ahmed’s Mashaallah (USA) (Nijinsky {Can}) and Sheikh Hamdan’s Muhtarram (USA) (Alleged {USA}).

Classic glory came in 1996 when Shantou (USA) (Alleged {USA}) took the St Leger and, even more notably, in 1997 when Landon Knight’s Benny The Dip (USA) (Silver Hawk {USA}), one of the small minority of horses in the stable racing in non-Maktoum ownership, landed the greatest prize of all, the Derby at Epsom.

Glory at Manton

All was going swimmingly, but Gosden seemingly felt that greater glories might await if he became his own man. Therefore, in advance of the 2000 season he reached an agreement with the Sangster family to train at Manton, the magnificent downland estate just outside Marlborough in Wiltshire which Derby-winning trainer Peter Chapple-Hyam had just vacated in order to relocate to Hong Kong. Previously Alec Taylor sr, Alec Taylor jr, Joe Lawson and George Todd had all brought glory to Manton.

Gosden started there as he would continue, saddling Sheikh Hamdan’s Lahan (GB) (Unfuwain {USA}) to win the G1 1,000 Guineas that spring.

Arguably the best of the many top-class horses whom Gosden trained at Manton was Prince Khalid Abdullah’s brilliant Oasis Dream (GB) (Green Desert {USA}), Europe’s dominant sprinter of 2003. However, one thing was still missing from Gosden’s idea of perfection: he needed to put down roots in his own property.

As he observed, “I was in danger of being like my hero Bob Dylan, permanently on the road." He finally secured his own permanent base at the end of 2006 when he bought Clarehaven Stables at the end of Newmarket’s Bury Road from the executors of the late Alec Stewart, who had sent out many big winners from the stable, headed by dual Eclipse S. hero Mtoto (GB) (Busted {GB}).

Clarehaven has a rich history, having been built in 1901 after Dorset-based trainer Peter Purcell Gilpin had won a fortune in bets when training a horse of that name to win Newmarket’s Cesarewitch H. in 1900. Remarkably, Gilpin’s first intake of yearlings at Clarehaven had included the horse with whom his name will be forever linked: the mighty Pretty Polly (Ire) (Gallinule {GB}), widely regarded as both the greatest filly/racemare of the 20th century and the most influential broodmare.

In later years Clarehaven became home to Joe Lawson, one-time head lad for Alec Taylor jr at Manton before becoming the trainer there. Lawson spent his final few seasons training at Clarehaven, a period whose highlight came in 1954 when he prepared Never Say Die (USA) (Nasrullah {Ire}) to become not only the first Kentucky-bred colt to win the Derby, but also the first of the nine Derby winners ridden by Lester Piggott, then still aged only 18.

Enable, the Cartier Queen

Until very recently, one would have been safe in saying that Pretty Polly would always rank as the greatest horse ever trained in Clarehaven, but victory for Prince Khalid Abdullah’s Enable (GB) (Nathaniel {Ire}) in the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe in two weeks’ time would see Pretty Polly’s position under threat.

An unprecedented third win in Europe’s greatest weight-for-age race would see Enable (whose sire was trained by Gosden to win both the G1 King George VI And Queen Elizabeth S. and the G1 Eclipse S.) placed on a similar pedestal within the pantheon. It would also make her undisputedly the greatest horse ever trained by John Gosden – and that really would be saying something, because over the past few years he has made the unveiling of champions look as easy as shelling peas!

The highlight of Gosden’s first season (2007) at Clarehaven was the St Leger victory of George Strawbridge’s Lucarno (USA) (Dynaformer {USA}). An even more special day was to follow the following autumn. Breeders’ Cup Day 2008 represented a kind of home-coming for Gosden as it was held at Santa Anita, and he celebrated his return in style, saddling a double courtesy of Donativum (GB) (Cadeaux Genereux {GB}) in the G1 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile and Raven’s Pass (USA) (Elusive Quality {USA}) in the highlight, the G1 Breeders’ Cup Classic. Both colts bore the silks of Princess Haya of Jordan.

Since then, Gosden’s champions have been coming thick and fast, raced by a wide range of owners (and very often owner/breeders). He has prepared four of the past five Cartier Horses of the Year: Prince Khalid Abdullah’s Kingman (GB) (Invincible Spirit {Ire}) in 2014, Anthony Oppenheimer’s Golden Horn (GB) (Cape Cross {Ire}) in 2015, Enable in 2017 and Qatar Racing’s Roaring Lion (USA) (Kitten’s Joy {USA}) in 2018.

Roaring Lion won his top award from among a Gosden-dominated group: three of the four nominations for Horse of the Year were Clarehaven inmates, with Enable and Anthony Oppenheimer’s Cracksman (GB) (Frankel {GB}) also on the short-list. Of the awards for the individual categories, Enable collected the Cartier Older Horse Award, Roaring Lion collected the Cartier Three- Year-Old Colt Award, Bjorn Nielsen’s Stradivarius (Ire) (Sea The Stars {Ire}) collected the Cartier Stayer Award and Lord Lloyd Webber’s Too Darn Hot (GB) (Dubawi {Ire}) collected the Cartier Two-Year-Old Colt Award.

Collectively, these stars had ensured that Gosden had ended the season as Britain’s Champion Trainer, the third time in seven years that he had headed the list.

Gosden thus became only the second trainer (after Aidan O’Brien in 2016) to be responsible for the winners of five Cartier Awards. At present one might say that he has a strong chance of repeating the feat this year, with Enable and Stradivarius likely to repeat their 2018 Awards and then have Horse of the Year claims; with Anthony Oppenheimer’s Irish Oaks heroine Star Catcher (GB) (Sea The Stars {Ire}) a contender for the Three-Year-Old Filly Award; and with both Too Darn Hot and Prince Khalid Abdullah’s St Leger winner Logician (GB) (Frankel {GB}) potential chances to receive the Three-Year-Old Colt Award.

With this whirlwind of success revolving around him, Gosden remains the voice of calm in the eye of the storm. Invariably composed and dignified, he greets Triumph and Disaster just the same and is equally at home walking with kings or talking with crowds.

Ever loyal to his clients, his staff and his jockeys, he brings a healthy and often much-needed measure of old-school reliability to the game. His partnership with stable jockey Frankie Dettori is clearly based on mutual trust and respect; while riding as the stable’s second, third or fourth jockey is a better job than being first jockey pretty much anywhere else.

Now aged 68, John Gosden is at the height of his powers. He stands as Britain’s dominant as well as most respected trainer (and is likely to remain so for the foreseeable future) with eleven British Classic wins, five Breeders’ Cup victories and three Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe successes heading his three-figure G1 roll of honour.