Four of a kind

Ralph Beckett has trained a quartet of Group 1 winners to win five top-level races in 2022, writes James Thomas

RALPH BECKETT could be forgiven for not wanting 2022 to end.

The latest Turf season has brought the trainer five Group 1 wins from four different horses spread across three countries, another Classic triumph and domestic prize-money earnings in excess of £2.7 million.

That total not only sees him in tenth in the trainers’ championship, but is £800,000 more than his stable won when posting its previous best in 2021.

“If we didn’t enjoy this year there wouldn’t be much point doing it,” he says with some understatement.

Kinross has taken a leading role among the cast of stable stars, with commanding wins in Group 2s at York and Doncaster before readily recording back-to-back Group 1 strikes in the Prix de la Forêt and then the Qipco British Champions Sprint Stakes.

The son of Kingman ended a fruitful five-year-old campaign with a valiant effort behind Modern Games in the Breeders’ Cup Turf Mile, running a fast-finishing third, beaten just three-quarters of a length, despite the burden of a car park draw.

In truth, Kinross has been regarded as something out of the ordinary ever since he made a winning debut by 8l in October 2019, but it wasn’t until, somewhat ironically, he was castrated that he started to realise his potential, as Beckett explains: “What really made a man of him was gelding him, that changed everything at the beginning of last year.”

Marc Chan’s charge has plied his trade over everything from 6f to a mile during a season that has seen a spree of improvement. While he ended the year with a hectic racing schedule, his life at Kimpton Down Stables has been rather less intense.

“I think what’s happened this year has been down to a couple of things,” says Beckett. “He’s a clean-winded horse so if I went back through the workbook I’m pretty sure he hasn’t actually had a gallop at home for a long time. He wouldn’t have done much between the Lennox and the City of York and then he ran five times in two months.

“That’s combined with the way he’s been ridden as well. Frankie saved every ounce at York and Doncaster, and in the Forêt and on Champions Day, because he always had another target down the line.

“Being ridden like that has really made a difference, although you can only ride them like that if you’re on the best horse.”

Beckett has close ties with Kinross’s family having trained the dam, the Listed-winning Ceilidh House, as well as his three siblings. But while he recalls that Ceilidh House was “pretty hardy on the racecourse and off it”, her Group 1-winning son possesses a more delicate disposition than his consistent and versatile race record would indicate.

Two of the 2022 Beckett Group 1 winners: above, Kinross, and, below, Westover winning the Irish Derby

“We’ve never had a horse like him, especially in the sense that he’s got a very low pain threshold,” he says. “Every little thing is a disaster to him. He pulled a shoe off on the Thursday after the Forêt and we couldn’t ride him until the following Monday, so three or four of the 13 days between the Forêt and the Champions Sprint he didn’t leave his box.

“Having a low pain threshold and being tough on the racecourse, they’re not symbiotic, though. We’ve all had horses who are tough when push comes to shove but you wouldn’t necessarily pick that up at home.”

While Kinross may not have inherited his dam’s hardiness, he has paid a fine tribute to the skill of his breeder nonetheless, joining Look Here and Scope on Lawn Stud’s illustrious roll of honour.

“Julian Richmond-Watson has never had more than six mares at home and has bred three individual Group 1 winners in the last 14 years. That’s extraordinary by any measure.”

ANOTHER BREEDER whose achievements are extraordinary by any measure is Juddmonte, who provided Beckett with his fourth Classic success when Westover romped away with the Irish Derby to the tune of 7l.

“To win an Irish Derby is a big deal on any level,” he says. “Not too many English horses have done that lately, it gave me a big kick.”

Oaks victories with Look Here and Talent and a St Leger triumph with Simple Verse had seen Beckett typecast as a trainer of middle-distance fillies, but Westover’s triumph not only laid that notion to rest once and for all, but did so for the connections who had already done so much to alter the wider perception.

“I had no problem with being labelled a trainer of middle-distance fillies, I had no problem at all because we made a business out of it,” he says. “But to be able to do it with a colt was hugely satisfying.

“Being sent yearlings by Juddmonte for the first time in the autumn of 2015 was a big deal for us. It changed everything because we were sent equal numbers of colts and fillies from the outset.

"Juddmonte didn’t view us as one-dimensional, and up until then we were training nearly two-thirds fillies to colts. That changed that dynamic, so to win an Irish Derby for them, it finally put that theory to bed.”

Things didn’t all go Westover’s way in 2022, most notably with a luckless trip in the Derby before a blowout in the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes. But he was far from disgraced when sixth in the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe and will look to further his record when he returns at four.

“We look like going to the Sheema Classic with him at the end of March,” says Beckett. “He’s a big horse and you would think that he’d develop from three to four. I’d be surprised if he wasn’t at least as good next year and I’m hopeful that he might be better.”

Beckett’s flair across the Flat racing spectrum was emphasised by the exploits of champion two-year-old Lezoo, another Chan-owned runner whose four victories culminated with success in the Cheveley Park

If the likes of Kinross and Westover were of obvious ability from the outset, Lezoo’s rapid ascent came as a pleasant surprise.

“She’s been very good at hiding her light under a bushel,” the trainer says. “I told her owners that I thought she was capable of winning a novice before she won on debut, but I never saw her going through the grades as she did.

“She’s not flashy at home, she just does what you ask of her. It wouldn’t surprise me if she kept going next year because she looks after herself. I think there’s a good case to be made that there’s more to come.

“She’ll have a Guineas entry and we’ll try that if it looks the right thing to do, but I think her pedigree suggests she’s more likely to go the Commonwealth Cup route.”

The other Group 1 winner Beckett saddled in 2022 is Chan and Andrew Rosen’s Prosperous Voyage, beaten just a neck behind Cachet in the 1,000 Guineas before an aborted Prix Saint-Alary bid saw her rerouted to the Falmouth Stakes, which she duly won by a length and three-quarters from Inspiral.

It is no secret that winnng races tends to require good fortune along the way, but it is questionable whether Real Madrid or Liverpool have ever actively had a hand in a Group 1 victory before.

"It was a huge effort in the Guineas as she was only just ready," says Beckett. "She didn't go well at Ascot and then thank god she didn't make the ferry for the Prix Saint-Alary. She got stuck in the traffic on the way down to the tunnel thanks to the Champions League final being in Paris the same weekend, so we brought her home.

“The form book says she’s not good around a bend and that’s the way she needs to be campaigned so we’ll try again next year.”

There has been plenty to keep Beckett busy this autumn, too, as he looks to consolidate his elevated standing with a fresh generation of talent. Even if his name hasn’t been on the yearling sale docket as much as it once was, he says he has always enjoyed the process of horse trading.

“We’ve got a lot of yearlings from the sales and luckily we’re still training for the same owner-breeders, and a couple of extras as well, so there’s plenty to get on with,” he says. “As a buyer myself I’m probably not buying as many as I used to. I spend more time acting on instructions now, which my wife and the bank manager enjoy a lot more!"

When it comes to identifying future talent at the embryonic stage, Beckett can call upon the services of noted judges Alex Elliott and Jamie McCalmont.

“Having been the only racehorse trainer ever to be fired by their bloodstock agent when David Redvers became contracted to Qatar Racing, the partnership with Alex Elliott and Jamie McCalmont that came about as a result of that has been successful and fulfilling,” he says. “In different ways they have become a big part of the operation and I couldn’t do it without either of them.”

WHILE BUYING well is a crucial part of any training business, so too is knowing when to sell. As well as his client base of powerful owner-breeders, Beckett trains for a number of trading syndicates such as the Lucra Partnership and Valmont, both of whom source yearlings through Elliott with the express purpose of tapping into the lucrative resale market.

To some the idea of buying to sell may seem antithetical to the aims of a training operation, but Beckett takes the opposite view.

"I learned a hard lesson early on that you've got to trade to be able to keep paddling," he says. "I had a horse called Rampant, who was practically the first yearling I bought, and we got offered a lot of money at the end of his three-year-old career and we turned it down. He sold for just £600 as a four-year-old.

“We were able to move forward because we traded other horses at the right time though. We didn’t always get it right, no one does, but being afraid to sell a horse is unsustainable in my opinion. That’s the lesson I learned.”

Beckett’s yard was among the vendors at a red-hot renewal of the Tattersalls Autumn Horses-in-Training Sales, and it certainly picked the right moment to sell the progressive two-time winner Gadget Man –Derek and Judith Newell’s homebred son of Jack Hobbs realised 310,000gns to Australian trainer Chris Waller.

Some have decried the “talent drain” of unexposed horses sold abroad, but Beckett takes the pragmatic position that, given prizemoney in Britain, is hard to argue with.

“The reason people have been able to have sustainable businesses is because of the resale market,” he says. “I’ve never been at a sale like the Tattersalls Autumn Horses In Training Sale this year. From top to bottom we sold well, perhaps there was one we thought might’ve made a bit more. One out of 20-odd. That’s never happened before.

“And that keeps people in the game, there’s no doubt about that. Around the time I started and before prize-money meant that you didn’t have to sell horses and it was sustainable. That’s no longer the case.”

A paucity of prize-money sits front and centre among the myriad challenges facing British racing, many of which Beckett has tackled head on in his role as president of the National Trainers Federation.

However, although he would be more accustomed to sticking his head above the parapet than most in the industry, this year’s results are a testament to his ongoing focus on the pursuit of winners. The racing landscape may have changed dramatically since he saddled his first runner, John Company, on November 27, 1999, but he is adamant that he wouldn’t alter the trajectory of his own career.

“I wouldn’t change anything,” he says. “When I started training I inherited five homebreds from Peter Walwyn and not even my closest friends saw it as sustainable.

“I wanted to train horses more than anything else but my only ambition was to get through to the following year. None of us have forgotten that, so to be still doing it 23 years later, I’ve been very fortunate.”