The British Flat trainers’ championship winners’ club is among the most exclusive in the sport, with just a dozen new members through its doors in the past 50 years. Aidan O’Brien, John Gosden, Richard Hannon Jr and Charlie Appleby, meanwhile, are the only trainers to win a first title outright this century. Becoming the fifth seems to be the last thing on Andrew Balding’s mind, however, despite an exceptional week at York’s Ebor festival that took his prize-money total for the season past £7m, his domestic Group One tally since 10 July to four and left him just under £700,000 behind O’Brien in the title race.
The trainers’ championship is the least important thing in my opinion, if the right races are abroad then that’s where they should go. Balding, as he is the first to admit, enjoyed a huge slice of racing luck when he inherited the trainer’s licence at one of the sport’s finest and most historic yards from his father, Ian, in 2003. Park House Stables, near Watership Down in Hampshire, was founded by John Porter, the most successful trainer of the Victorian era, in the 1860s, and was home to 23 Classic winners – including three Triple Crown winners – between 1868 and 1900.
Porter was champion trainer in 1899, while Ian Balding, who died on 2 January this year, was a second champion at the yard in 1971, when he prepared the brilliant Mill Reef to win the Derby, the King George and the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe. A rich inheritance in any walk of life can be easily squandered, but Andrew Balding has instead built the operation to an entirely new level over the past 23 years. As a result, he not only has the proven Group One quality required to mount a serious challenge for the title – he has the numbers, too.
John Gosden, in 2023, was the last title-winning trainer based in Britain. He saddled 130 winners from 600 runners for a total of £7.21m in prize money, including seven Group One winners, beating O’Brien’s total of £6.46m – from just 21 winners in all, eight in Group Ones – by £750,000. Mostahdaf’s wins in the Prince of Wales’s Stakes and International Stakes made him the stable’s biggest individual winner by far, with £1.13m all by himself.
But the top 10 earners combined picked up a total of £4.05m, and Gosden ran no fewer than 210 individual horses over the year. It was sheer force of numbers that ultimately got him over the line. Balding, with £7.06m this season, is already within sight of Gosden’s winning total three years ago.
O’Brien, though, has already banked £7.77m and is on course to eclipse his personal record of £8.12m in the 2025 championship. But whether he will add “another £2m” is debatable. O’Brien has won the St Leger for the last three seasons and has the top two – Christmas Day and Pierre Bonnard – in the ante-post betting for next month’s Doncaster Classic, so we can probably give him that.
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