Loving his job

Yann Barberot loves training in Deauville and the ex-jockey is having a fine time of things at present.

He won the All-Weather Sprint Championship in April with Bouttemont, had runners in this year’s French Classics, and Sicilian Defense won a Listed race at the start of the Deauville summer season

YANN BARBEROT is a trainer whose time has come. Some 15 years after the ex-jockey launched his new career as a trainer in Deauville, the stable is clearly on the verge of joining the elite group of French-based trainers who compete regularly in the country’s best races.

In 2021, Barberot’s stable enjoyed its best season to date with 60 wins in France, and this year it succeeded in winning its first race in England when Bouttemont took the All Weather Sprint Championship at Newcastle in April. He has also been competing in the French fillies’ Classic races with Daisy Maisy and Sicilian Defense.

“My first plan was to go to Newcastle with a different horse,” says Barberot about his British All-Weather win, “but then when the time came I realised that Bouttemont was the horse at the peak of his form and ready to go.

Trainer Yann Barberot (far right) with Bouttemont after victory at Newcastle in the All Weather Sprint Championship

“It was a great day, it is very difficult to win in Britain – now we have one winner we shall certainly be looking for more.”

Travelling is however never straight forward.

“My next runner in Britain was Toimy Son in the Jersey Stakes at Royal Ascot,” he adds. “He travelled over from Deauville on a day when the temperature was in the 90s and when I saw him in the paddock before the race I knew he had no chance.

“The horse was just not there and the journey had taken too much out of him. He may not have been good enough to compete, but as it turned out we still don’t know as he didn’t run his race. I will keep trying.

“The prize-money in France is so good, particularly with the premiums for Frenchbred horses, that it is not always an obvious decision to pay for the transport to go and compete in England or even in Germany but I enjoy challenges and competition is our job.

These days I train for some breeders, and for a breeder the equation is different than for those who are only interested in racing and prize-money.

Barberot was a jockey for nearly 20 years and rode more than 400 winners. He was based in the west of France and rode frequently for the Deauville-based trained Stefan Wattel.

“I loved being a jockey,” he remembers, “and hadn’t really thought about what would come next, even in a little part of my brain! I did have an idea that I might try to be a trainer. I used to go to Cagnes for the winter meeting for Stefan, and while he was away in Deauville I used to oversee the training of the horses who were based there and it was something I enjoyed a great deal.”

The future caught up with Barberot suddenly when his riding career was ended by a heart attack during a race at Craon in 2007.

“Let’s say that at the time I had trouble with my weight and my lifestyle was very far from a healthy one,” he explains.

For a year he stopped everything in order to recover and then had to face up to the future.

“I went to see Stefan and asked him if I could work as his assistant. He said of course I could, but that he thought it was a bad idea and that in his opinion I should set up on my own. In the end he was right.

“I worked as his assistant for about a month and than in 2008 I set out in Deauville as a trainer.”

The choice of Deauville was an easy one at the time and he is more convinced than ever that it is the ideal place to train racehorses.

“Deauville has,” he says, “the perfect climate for training thoroughbreds as it is never either too hot or too cold but a moderate temperature all the year round.

“All of the stud farms and breaking in and pre-training centres are close to Deauville, the summer meeting here is about the best quality racing in France of the year, and now we have a winter meeting on the All-Weather and under floodlights, too.

“Arqana is just across the road from the racecourse and we are only two hours by horsebox from the Paris racetracks. I don’t see where would be a better place to train from.”

Barberot believes Deauville is the perfect place to train racehorses

The training centre in Deauville is full these days and the successful trainers based there, Jean-Claude Rouget, Wattel and Barberot himself amongst others, have no problem filling the boxes they have available.

Since the arrival of Rouget, whose string is now split between Deauville and Pau, nobody doubts that it is possible to train the best horses and win the best races from Deauville.

“Jean-Claude has raised the profile of Deauville as a training centre,” says Barberot, “and we all have to aim higher if we wish to keep up. He used to keep horses here to prepare for big races before he had an official stable here and so he has appreciated Deauville as a training centre for years.”

Barberot adds: “Jean-Claude is amazing. Sometimes we don’t see him for a week or so and yet when he comes back he not only knows all of his horses by heart but he knows mine, too!

“It is almost irritating as I don’t know his in the same way as he knows mine!

“If it is has been difficult for new trainers to break through in France it is in part because the older generation included remarkable trainers such as André Fabre, Rouget and Alain de Royer-Dupre.”

IN RECENT YEARS Barberot has been able to buy better quality yearlings and the results have followed.

“It is,” he insists, “certainly a lot easier to buy well if you have some money to spend!”

Bouttemont was a €125,000 Deauville August yearling and Daisy Maisy was bought at the COVID-delayed September Sale in 2020 for €240,000.

Daisy Maisy was a close-up fifth in the Poule d’Essai des Pouliches and then sixth in the Prix de Diane.

“She is,” he reasons, “a good filly but just a little below the best. I hope she will be able to win her Group race. I will bring her back in trip – in the Diane the others were just a little too good for her and the distance a little too far.”

These two both belong to Philippe Allaire and partners, a name very well known in the trotting world where the Allaire family has been prominent for many years – Philippe Allaire himself has owned and trained the winners of all of the top races.

“I have learnt a great deal from working with Philippe,” Barberot says. “He knows a great deal and at the same time we have fun and share the same ambition to compete in the best races.

“Training high-class horses is like a drug, once you have had the experience you can only think about how to find new quality horses in order to have the same feeling again.

“I know we need to keep winning handicaps and races to bring the money in, but I am always trying to raise the quality of horses we have and we are constantly making a selection of which ones to keep.”

Barberot bought his own stable in Deauville a few years ago and built a new one next door.

Today he has 70 to 75 horses in training all the year round with another 30 or so being either broken in or pre-trained at one of the many establishments in the Deauville area.

“I wasn’t trained to run a business!” he laughs. “Now I have some 20 to 25 employees and so there is a big responsibility and plenty of stress, but I enjoy running a team and trying to bring along young people.

“I have two young apprentice jockeys working for me who both won their first race this year, Dorian Provost and Louis Nomis, and that is something I enjoy doing.

“If I hadn’t been involved with horses perhaps I could have been a football trainer?”

Barberot is hopeful his owners will follow him again at the yearling sales but then as he points out racing is a competitive business.

“Every year we have to start again from scratch,” he says. “Last year we won 60 races but you never know for sure how the next year will turn out and whether the ones we bought are any good.

“In this business you can never be sure of anything and all we can do is to keep doing everything possible to win races.”