A tour of the home of Horse Racing. The history of Newmarket with expert guide Sir Mark Prescott.

[Music] my name's Sir Mark Prescott I've lived in Newmarket for 54 years I've trained here for very nearly 50 I've enjoyed every day of it I just love the place and I'm so looking forward to having the chance to show everybody round all the sights and sounds I've loved for so long [Music] where I came up to sales the old sale ring with Morris Bailey I would have been 215 he trained pony racers and we were trying to buy a cheap one and there was snow on the ground and everywhere had straw sprayed and there was a horse of Berlin crosses we wanted to see Maury said go get that horse Anton so I went and got it out and it was 2 6 8 and in the fog we couldn't really see and and we'd wanted to 66 and the lad leading it up he turned to me he said well you are a blind but he said as a National Health for people like you and he turned to Morris as for you you bull so it was quite a baptism of fire really you know I then came to work for mr. wall he spotted me on the on the road and said that's what I like boy you're on time and look round evening stables and in the evening he said come back in and have a come back in the house I thought how nice he's going to give me a drink or something water how lucky I am and he said you ever done it for his boy so I said a little bit when I was with mr. kundle well he said here's last week's entry form here's the extract I'm making in pencil on full scrap paper you'll soon work out my horrid lifx here's this week's entry form pop on my desk I'll past 4:00 in the morning good night so I've got anywhere to stay or anything so I stayed at the the horseshoes at the bottom there and they said we'll give you a bit of supper as I've got time for supper just just give me a room and by half-past one two o'clock I'd worked out all the hieroglyphics he'd given me pencil and paper I then did the next week's entries in pencil and paper and then I rolled it off in red and blue borrow the horses names in red and the maid meetings in blue look fantastic left it on his desk half past four in the morning unlocked the yard with chat button rode out and he was charming came back in he said that's your desk that's my desk that's the secretary so I sat at my desk which is completely empty except for a pile of shredded paper and worse still I could see red and blue borrow so I summoned up all my courage and I said excuse me so was that something you didn't like about the entries and he said I said do them in pencil boy put them on my desk up first for tomorrow morning so that was day one and the lesson was of course you do just as I say this is Warren Hill wood and after our horses canter they have a pick of grass here and if you film this and you maybe had a competition with racing post readers and ask them where it was probably nobody would get Newmarket and the man in charge of new market and all the secret little places is mr. Patton how long have you been here ten years now in the job of looking after the Newmarket raining grains when I first came in here it was just literally Newmarket training grounds there's lamb born in Epsom I know the whole jockey club estates sort of business as well and the jobs expand expanding yeah and so when I came here there were 35 trainers in 750 horse yeah no that's gone up to now there's 63 traders and on average about two thousand six hundred and eighty odd horses and how have we managed to cope on the same age today so Marc you did it entirely my I'm just I'm just following on for what you've done but the advent of artificial gallop it was all about the artificial zone the artificial now or the bread and butter there of the training grains and you know the grass is wonderful it's lovely to have you know thousands of acres of grass but you know nowadays with these modern horses we're only sort of seeing the grass being used when it's absolutely perfect don't wait exactly and I think the grass therefore is better hmm actually than it was when I came because it gets relatively less used yeah and it's only used now when it's perfect you know extraordinarily with more horses that the ground is better than ourselves yeah right now everybody pull their heads up quietly so these are all two-year-olds who none of these have run yet but they're not so far away from the dreams all ending in nightmares that they're all at that nice stage where their future is in front of them how do we do any more this is a half-sister to Marsha she's small small okay [Music] there are 58 other towns with racecourse what makes Newmarket you need what got the trainer's to come the Sadler's the ancillary industries the vets tattoo sores is the gallops so the sacred thing about Newmarket is the galitsin I've been lucky enough for 40 odd years to be in charge of the gallops I don't suppose any of my trainers think I've do a good job but nobody seems mad keen to do it I always say the only words they've never said to me - would you thanking you but it's not quite true it's not quite true and it's been a privilege to look after them this is the iconic part of Newmarket this is Warren Hill and seen from this way that you don't normally everybody sees it from the bottom and I think from here you get a great view and of course this is the scene that's painted all the time in the 16th 17th century we've got so many images of it and so many people say oh well it's artistic license the hills far too steep it's never like that I've been on Warren Hill and the reason is of course is that they don't realize that this was the old Warren Hill and the Kings chair is seen and they're coming up this very very steep part from Qi Valley Road later on would probably have time to call in at the jockey club rooms and you can see the famous Tillman's painting and you'll see then why the hill is so much steeper in his artwork than it is in reality mr. patents here he's in charge of all the gallops and he'll explain what you see here because there's not just one gallop here there's one two three four five six different gallops all on this stretch of ground Lauren Hill is yazzo Marc Salem is iconic you know of all the sort of facilities on the Newmarket training grounds it rises sort of 40 meters over four and a half furlongs and that's basically use 365 days a year for all their conditioning exercise conditioning work and then over that other side of Warren Hill we've got Long Hill which is slightly longer and we've got Long Hill Kanter Long Hill Gallup and we got the poly tract on Long Hill as well and again then again some far far hedge against those buildings ago I said we got the tank counter which is just a quite a bit of a warm-up canter so any sort of fight fair long as I say it's a bit of a warm-up great on a Monday morning or from the young horses to get to get going I'm positioned at the bottom and if I can't train horses here I need my head read train have you have you missed never never never miss getting a horse out if I wanted to any day never ever ever so their job is to get the place open in the morning ever frost yeah however gasps yeah that is the worst for us is the winter because you know when it's - whatever and we've had snow wet night what nice big frost absolute nightmare and is when are the train and when are my colleagues at their most difficult is it when it's frosty or just when flat racing begins I think just from flat Racing's way to begin know why that is but it's just before that period of time in that sort of March after Cheltenham Festival and that everyone's starting to good do it wanted to do a little bit more and that's I think that can be and all the horses start going lame and coughing and things so they get so they get edgy and you've quite right they have and what about relations with the town mister path that's really important I mean the the community at the end of the day it's I mean Newmarket is such a community with you know racing the industry and the tain and that's something I particularly I'm very passionate about is making sure their relationships between the racehorse industry and the tiny are good so we would do the jockeys up states for example would you know I just give you example we would sort of do KX a little picking on the playing fields now and again we lay the public to use the training grounds in the afternoons we've set a set up a sort of basically what's called a great run local on every Sunday morning so that you know the community can use the heath you know for for exercise and health and well-being although it's private property anybody's allowed after 12:30 as long as they behave and of course today it looks alright but there's a trig point there and that trig point is the highest point between here and the Urals there's a fascinating information and of course and nobody believes you until they're up here in February and of course a straight line goes across East Anglia oh yeah it's it's pretty it's a plane of Moscow yeah and the wind comes it's pretty it can be pretty cold up here in the wintertime this and we're off to race course side now and that's where patterns peak may one day glorious projects we're not going to escape without you telling us about that the idea being to put a hill on that side of town we've discussed it's later times before but I mean you know they had the properity of Warren Hill and conditioning work and we're very in this country we're all about sort of you know working on an incline conditioning why the trip to Japan I saw these man-made Hills indoor man-made Hill I said well if they can do it across the other side of the world we should be able to do something here but if it happens in my lifetime I don't know either we get planning permission then at least it can it can yeah exactly exactly well thanks very much yeah we'll pass your pleasure that's it [Music] we're at the devil's guide and was built by Queen Boadicea 2,000 years ago to keep the Romans and goes for 18 miles it stops at reached and there because the fens were impassable and it ends in more marshland up there and either side is the race courses that you know and we know and on my left is the July course grandstands and on my right is the roller mile grandstand and the two courses divided here and on the extreme left also there is the national stud so this is an absolutely vital bit of land in Newmarket and the importance of the Heath you can't overestimate really because the motorway went 3 and a half miles out of its way around it the railway line in 1836 went nearly a mile under it not an acre was plowed in the war for the war effort and Newmarket has entirely evolved and been shaped by the Heath the idea was that you raced on the rolling mile in the spring and the autumn when it was wet and the course would get cut out and because of the chalk it drains very well and the July course on the left the idea was that it was never raced on except when it was very firm so the divots never got turned over so rather like the lion kills now you just had this perfectly smooth racecourse and of course the gap in the ditch behind me that was for the Bombers during the war so that they could take off both ways but not an acre got plowed and there's an absolutely wonderful story because Captain Marryat was in charge of the Heath and he for 50 years and he'd had a wonderful first world war he'd rushed around slitting Germans throats and multi decorated and then he ran the Heath and during the Second World War an American general was touring round to make sure there was nowhere for the Third Reich to land everywhere had to be plowed or have tank traps and he suddenly got here and there were 2700 acres are the most beautifully maintained Heath and the general pulled up and he walked across and he said to an old Heath man who was banging in the divots what's happening here you could land the whole of the Third Reich the Luftwaffe could land every plane they've got here and the old boys stopped in his work and he said no I'm afraid not sir he said Captain Marryat would never permit such a thing [Music] well you can't come to New Market really without coming to meet the man who since 2001 has been in charge of the racecourse here mr. Prosser 2001 till today what was the worst day we had a few challenges I suppose the most challenging challenging festival three days was the July Festival in 2012 when it rained or was it rain continuously it was a very unusual year the Jetstream sort of went straight through the center of the country and just brought rain right the way through this part of the at the region if you remember it was good to firm it asked us it was good to firm at York and we were heavy I think we pretty much had an inch of rain each day but that was on the top of significant rainfall already in the previous two weeks and I remember arriving on the Saturday morning and there was water in the car parks then I drove up the side of the course and there was water on the airfield itself I've never seen it before I've never seen it since and I called up Amy Starkey and I said we've got a problem because the extraordinaire market is it's only ever had one canceled day and in its history only one day has it not been able to run and I suppose that was as near as it came and the day was of course when the hurricane came what was that 1987 we think we think it's 87 and that all the rails that was a champions des jeux hearse was cancelled that was the Friday wasn't it and then I think they read averted the races to the following day but so yes I'm I was determined not to lose a fixture in my tenure here and we survived it was heavy ground I think they ran the July Cup in about 1 1 minute 16 or 17 and told can you just tell everybody we've had a look at with two courses can you just tell everybody roughly how it works and and the grasses and roughly what you have to do well here we are on the road a mile just before the ten furlong point and actually this point here is is slightly higher than the winning line above sea level and you can see how it undulates down towards towards the winning line itself and you can't really see the dip at this point in time the bushes is a high point roughly the two and a half furlong point at this point here the track is about 65 meters wide as you seek the bends plays out but from the 9 to the 5 it's 55 meters wide 13 hectares of racing surface on this course there's 8 hectares on the beacon the beacon course as we swing around the bend is takes in all the distance races so for the Roli mile races beyond 10 for the July course races beyond 8 in total there are 28 hectares of racing surface to manage we've just finished literally 30 draining this course will Harrow it next week and we will then just leave it for the summer they were living it we will not touch it we won't water it so for the whole of July in August if if there's no rainfall we don't water it because we want the roots to go down we want a good strong sward come the autumn and you know our forefathers they were very clever with the racing program that's what this course is designed for so all the courses that get irrigated looked after through the summer months differently when we get to the autumn this track will not go soft swiftly it will take a certain amount of rain before it changes that's why we staged four of the five Group one juvenile contests in this country we asked Nick Paton of course how it is possible to run the heat and satisfy between 61 and 82 racehorse trainers and the answer is of course it's impossible but you can please most of the people some of the time is the same true a bit running the race of course it is but I don't know whether I've just led a charmed life but you know I get on well with our customers the trainers and I think in my role you've just got to have a try be as accurate as you can with the information you're given the weather forecast may not turn out to be what you're told so it makes the job a bit tricky sometimes but I think transparency and honesty are a key part of my role and as long as you act in that fashion I think you'll be respected [Music] this is the boys grave and it's right at the end of the water hall gallops and it still used the term all the time canter up the boys grave take a turn at the boys grave but as you can see it's besieged by traffic and and it's here and the I'll tell you come and have a look and I'll show you reputedly in 1786 there was a gypsy boy and he was looking after the sheep on water all-weather gallops are and he counted them up in the evening and he was two or three short so he committed suicide in the wood and hanged himself and when they counted them the next day of course all the sheep were there so because he was a suicide in those days they weren't allowed to be buried in a church so he was buried at the crossroads the injustice of it I suppose is what's kept his memory going and as you can see the grave looked after a legend has it that the winning colors of the Darby will be the flowers here but my experiences they tend to be right after the race realm of them home from before the race but but it's rather a lovely story in the boys grave and it's still in all the work reports some Michael starts horses worked on water all up to the boy's grave and I suppose if any of us are remembered as long as he's been remembered we'll have done all right [Music] I can't think of any new thing where nobody's complained I mean you know we're all terrible we all complain about the new grandstand the new road than you but nobody complained about the London Eye and no one's complained about the rearing horse and the two sculptors that did him man and a woman one did the horse one did the man what a wonderful thing to have done everybody likes it and then of course there's got the new statue of the of the Queen by lankton we've got King Charles on the racecourse we've got all these famous horses everywhere from Hyperion and the high street to the racecourse Brigadier Jared I mean this place if you are a horse man and if you like history you can actually go and see what they look like marvellous isn't he he was 27 when the sculpture was done by John skipping skipping was a fair amateur rider himself he had a long affair with the most famous sculptress of her time Barbara Hepworth and he was always short of money and Lord Darby commissioned him to do this and it stood in the old horses field and I can remember it there and when the late Lord Darby died it came here and it's a as you say it's a sort of picture of tranquility and he stands outside the jockey club rooms and the subscription rooms in front of which tassels held their sails and inside which all the Jockey Club members bet and we're going in to have a look at the bits and pieces which are second to [Music] [Music] so here we are there's Hyperion again we've just seen him in the street and he's between us and LA and the high street and this is the subscription rooms and this is where the gentlemen bet its heyday was in the 1820s it was built in the 1780s and in these in little niches and alcoves the gentlemen would place their bets their horses held outside and then they'd ride back up onto the racecourse and the race would be run and then they'd come back and settle up again Monday's was settling day at tassles and you'd got to find the money by by Monday so they would run about eleven to twelve races and heats in the day and keep coming back and of course the finishing posts were different places as well so it was but there was plenty of writing involved during up during a day and there's all these lovely paintings here and probably the thing everybody liked see most is the is the whip here which is made from the hairs of Eclipse and it's the challenge with let's run for once a year [Music] this is Admiral rice the most important man that has ever been in horse-racing really because he invented the wait for age scale and by watching his horses work and gallop over the years and meticulously recording how they went he worked out that a two-year-old who will be of the same ability as a three-year-old a year later would need 26 pounds to be received to dead ain't in March and by the time it got through to October it was down to 70 now how the hell did he work that out it was like working out that you and I would sprint a hundred yards and we'd finish you'd beat me by length and I'd put a matchbox in your top pocket and we dead heat next time because that's what a pound is to a racehorse and his weight for age scale has really stood without change for nearly 200 years of course all over the world all these nerds and compare look don't tell me that this old Admiral could got this right but he had he got it right so handicapping meant that horses could compete against one another not just the same horses winning all the races and racing opened up all over the world because the risk man admiral rose and there's a great story about his handicapping because all trainers of course we believe that the handicapper is trying to stop our horse whinny and Admiral Peary went up into the stands one day and someone said now Admiral you look very pleased with yourself he said yes is this handicap of mine up been going through it very carefully there's eight runners and none of them [Music] so of course there's all sorts of marvelous paintings in the jockey club rooms and the stories about all of them I think my favorite one for a story is Alec Taylor who was the champion trainee trained at Manton I could stand you I could stand you on the spot there and he was very tough employer and everybody was terrified of him but there must have been a kind streak to him because his owners commissioned this painting which he gave to the jockey club in the end they commissioned this painting he said there's one thing I want he said I want to be standing on this spot I want the string in the valley and I want Albert my head lad at their back and I want him looking over his shoulder to see if I can see him because he'll light up a cigarette and he thinks I'm so stupid I don't know he's going to light up a cigarette just as soon as he's hidden by that little rise and he thinks he spent all these years and he doesn't know that I know and I want him to know that I did so I think it's a I think I like Taylor probably was a nicer man than than everybody else and then right below him is this wonderful wonderful sculpture Pretty Polly undoubtedly probably be with scepter the best filly that there ever was she was owned and bred by the Lauder family who still had the family at airfield lodge and there were only six of these done I believe and seized Sir Giles Lyon Huestis Lauder gave one to the head man and the head man passed it down through the family and in the end we got a call from a relation who was living in fairly modest circumstances to say that she was now old and she wanted to give this to the jockey club and we said well we can't you can't give it to us it's such a marvelous thing she said oh no sir I won't let you have it and unless you have it for nothing so there was somebody who didn't have very much money who it's a lesson to us all really who wanted this beautiful beautiful thing to come to the jockey club where it be appreciated and it is just so perfect Philips full of quality of ready to run what a marvel [Music] so this is the wrong with perhaps all great things in it than any other run and probably in the world with the racing interest and behind me on the right is the telemon's of Warren Hill and we went up there and we saw what it looked like from the top of Warren Hill and of course it's nothing like as steep as it's portrayed there but of course he was actually accurate in that those horses are coming up from the choovely roads and certainly the busyness and horses going in every direction shows that there were a lot of horses in the town and a lot of them principally used that gallop so nothing changes much and then behind me here is the portrait of Jim crack by Stubbs the companion painting made twenty million three or four years ago so it gives you some idea of the value of the collection here and Jim crack is being rubbed down after his trial and it is a trial although the jockeys in the background are wearing colors we know it's a trial because firstly none of those horses ever met those colors in a racecourse where the results were recorded but secondly because the grandstand in the back has got the shutters down and then I think my personal favorite is the herring of Mathilda and Jim Robinson at Doncaster she won listen ledger and that was the last race she ever completed in she was enormously highly strung and vulnerable and she refused to start and then she ran out and she never completed again but the one jockey who could ride her was Jim Robinson and what wonderful hands he's got just look at that those hands are completely relaxed and she of course of a mercurial temperament a little narrow head you could see how agitated she is and why he was just the jockey for her so creaking door and all this is the dining room in the jockey club rooms and it's most famous for the series of paintings by Emil Adam he was a French Belgian and he painted horses very very well we've got some photographs of these horses and the depictions are very very good and the tradition grew up that if you're a jockey club member and you are lucky enough to have a classic winner you had it painted by a meal Adam and you kept one painting for yourself and the other painting hung here and I think for modern observer the really interesting thing probably is to see the jockeys and a mule Adams great masterpiece is this portrait here of all Monde ridden by Fred Archer with his little cleft lip and standing in the paddock had Epsom and the flags are flying and the great occasion but look at the length look at the length that archers riding and he was the supreme champion jockey and four years later just after his death Todd Swain came over from America and wrote short and Todd Swan Road 36 percent winners to runners his first year in England and he just could not stop riding when as he made all the running and won lots of races unchallenged hence the expression on your todd todd Sloane rhyming slang on your own and within two years if you couldn't ride short your career was finished so up here is my hero Admiral Rice here is persimmon the Kings Derby winner still before Todd slowed Matt Dawson who trained at Heath House and of course was the leading trainer for years and years and you and here of course is the most wonderful sort of marvelous table piece solid gold and it's the hoof of Eclipse made into an inkwell which was given to King George and he gave it back to the jockey club and added in a nice gold bowl as well what a wonderful room with all these heroes and capacity down [Music] Samarra the greatest yourself very nice of you to show me around Jason saying he's in charge of marketing at Tattersall and a big big job it is - and it's transformed itself from well from the really the 50s - now to what you're going to see how many sales a year eleven about 7,000 horses go through the ring every year here and the gross last year Jeff Jaya 330 million guineas 330 million Guinea quite a lot of guineas it's just I was getting start to roundabout there [Music] tassels would it would still read the field well I mean we've been around for 250 two years now I guess as you sort of explain the you know it is such a big business these days compared to what it was back in the day I mean you look back at the turnover figures I mean they've just sort of risen exponentially over the last sort of 50 years to what they are now when I came here this ring wasn't here that we had that old ring in the core and it has completely changed and yearlings weren't allowed in here if they had hind shoes on because they were so badly handled in those days it killed someone fine big filly beautiful filly she's very very special indeed ask it about her in way else set of a light a bit away you will put her in two million a star put her in two million now what do I get away put her in a million a bit what would be your greatest memory well the most recently been the most recent memory is of course the horse that you trained Oh mark inside my ear which was an extraordinary night yeah the first six million 6 million guineas highest price to ever imagine house into in Europe the renews full pack and just the way they sold the horse the auctioneer was great and he went up and up and up and when it got to about 5 million eek he just said nothing and she was absolutely packed and she just walked round all he could hear was her feet walking around just marvelous and he had the sense to me to the sense of theatre really just to just to leave it the great Marsha goes at six million year quite sure anyone else want to join in what at six million was enough of you here anyway to form a big syndicate but at six million I sell in the middle of the gangway dawn here at six million last time and the Magnar from the very very best look so this is my spot yeah everybody has their own spots really cool more always up there and in the old days lady Beaverbrook was down there nowadays Charlie Gordon Watson's trying to hide up there everybody's got their own slot on play but for us who come and buy that's one thing and we sell a bit too but you've got an enormous task in assembling their catalogue seeing the how does that process work yeah it's it's got busier and busier as the years has gone on and you know now our year starts starts you know when everybody else is yes tarts and you know from early March we're we're receiving entries for the yearling sales we're just about completing seeing about 5,000 yearlings across England Ireland and throughout Europe and you're trying to pick the best yearlings to suit the buyers that you're getting to each of those sales so it is it's not a an exact science but it's and then some of the big vendors they all want to be in the same box as they you were the year before and hospitality but you've got a infinite a number of points where you could upset somewhat don't you absolutely and you know a lot of times people you know don't always accept that they're they a yearling might not be exactly good enough absolutely and you know what you're actually trying to do is still match that horse with all the buyers who are looking to spend a certain amount of money show yourself assemble with catalog then you've got to put in where they're going to stand at the time of a sale and all that sort of-- and then you've got the logistics of getting all the boxes ready and clearing the mount and so on how does that work because you're selling 2,000 horses in December sales and you've only got 700 boxes yeah absolutely it I guess it's like a hotel you know when a horse goes through the ring here they're given a certain amount of time which they I'm going to get out by and that that boxes then got to be cleaned out ready for the next horse that's come in so it is a logistical nightmare that thankfully I don't have to do anything about I know as a vendor you're never quite happy until that seventh day whose gods and your drafts been through some terrible thing keep coming back to you there's something certainly that day what's wrong with racing I said far too many good young trainers I mean they're very very good and the competition's got hotter and hotter as times gone by and that's enormous ly enormous ly simulating and it makes us you know we have to keep going and I always say that the Wolves are sniffing around the dustbins but I intend to give him a good kick every time I see him and the young trainers you know are very stimulating and we like the young trainers whereas when I started the old boys hated us but I started I was 20 19 years younger than the next youngest trainer in Newmarket and they absolutely hated me and then Along Came Andrew sessile and Sir Michael stout and Lukas Minh and they couldn't hate everybody [Music] I always say to a young trainer they say oh where would you go so mark I want to know how good a horse is and I say well if you want to know how good he is come and work him up the trial ground on the lime kilns but if you'd rather not know how good he is for God's sake don't come anywhere near it because it's absolutely ruthless and the gallop on my right runs down here along this hedge you start right at the bottom and you come up here for a mile and - it's peat moss absolutely straight just rising rising rising and it's completely unforgiving and if your horse works here with a bad one and it can't beat it then you've got a bad horse and you better wake up to it so it's probably the most special bit of ground and it's one of the only two galaxies new market that you have to pay to go on the rest are all free and then next to the gallop you've got here the long peat moss and then you've got the short and then you've got the canter and then round the outside is the round gallop and the round gallop you have to book but you don't have to pay for and normally you would set off here and then work all the way round up the hill and pull up over there which is a mile and four but sometimes quite a lot of people so Michael stouter I know he did it with one or two of his Derby horses and they'll set off there and then work down the hill left handed round the turn and then work back up here to the seventh Earl long pole coming across now to meet us is charlie fellows the great white hope of training and first Ascot winner this week and 15 minutes late but mercifully shaved so this is just gradually gradually we're edging him towards being the great trainer the doubt we'll be darling how are you you're slowly molding me into a very terrible trouble yeah but I look like having to open my my yard to the public because in a desperate attempt to get Charlie to tell himself out properly I've had a bet that if I can't spot him unshaved for a year I'll open heath house to the public now it's have gone before the tassles committee because I caught him the other day and he hadn't shaved in the morning but had shaved within 24 hours so we bet I'd saved for dinner I'd freshly I was freshly shaven the evening before for a very important suffer with owners and I didn't feel the need to shave twice in 24 hours just what I think I think the panel passed that one anyway Charlie do you use these gallops a lot when do you use them and could you explain to everybody I use these gallops as much as possible I did five years I served my apprenticeship with James Fanshawe who is the first one on the grass and the last one to leave it as it dries and although I'm not quite as brave as him I still very much try and get on the lime kilns as much as possible we galloped twice a week Wednesdays and Saturdays and as long as the you know the ground permitting we will use it wherever possible how often to use the Golden Mile the trial ground and pay for it of course was your owners have to pay interestingly I use this less than any of the others I love the round gallop yes I get a lot of stares I think I've all though I don't want to be cart CEO typecast as being someone who takes their time and and brings on these sort of longer distance horses slowly I trained for a lot of owner breeders and a lot of them mr. Oppenheimer Mrs Cooper they they tend to send me sort of staying tight and and the round gallop is perfect for those stairs because you can get them over a mile and it's it tends to be beautiful ground up where you start if you were going to work a mile on the round so I would tell them to just jog away for a furlong yep dad here so they can sit down and then we get to cross the road at the bottom and then generally what I tell them to do is just they jog away for a furlong I dropped that first furlong and then at the firaon pole they start to pick it up and we normally work to about the 9 on the round around there of course new market there's 81 trainers and times and always over 60 and it's rather like having 80 green grocers in the same street if if I'm selling a lot of apples you can't be yeah do you find there is a camaraderie I mean famously you're using all the all the new social media and there's been great fun even I've been observing some of your comments is there a camera during how do you find would you miss it if you went somewhere like mantle oh definitely I definitely think I would miss it obviously there's how many trainers are there at time so I don't have great you know camaraderie with all 81 trainers but there are a significant number who I get on very well with we enjoy each other's successes as much as I enjoy someone else's unsuccess a Scott so George Scott I would I would every time his horses get beat I laugh and mercilessly and I know that it will come round but and then the other day with the filly that one and a skits I beat William haggis yeah with the Queen's horse who finished second having broken the rule having broken that having broken the rules where it's another story but but the reason that was amusing is because that actually I ended William owned my filly and sold it to me as a breeze up well he took great pleasure in telling me that I'd lined his pockets last year as you can imagine I took great pleasure and then beating him at Royal asked it a year later so but he was the first person that came up and said he was delighted and I wouldn't have expected anything No well Charlie that's lovely thank you very much indeed let me get on I think with the economy picking up the studs the stables or better maintained than they were before certainly the numbers have increased enormously I think the grass gallops are better than when I came tassels have grown out all recognition the horses the veterinary side has improved all just out of recognition most things have have got better and I think it's wonderful to get to the stage of my career and still think things are getting better [Music] okay so we're now at the neh which is the spanking new veterinary practice and mr. Doug Dale's my vet our paid him fortunes over the years I've read how many children four children four children entirely but my horses being ill Alain and he's unrecognizably smart because we've held in that from going to the to the racy so mr. d thank you very much now when I came to Newmarket it was a nice civilized system there were 35 trainers and how many vets were there in 1970 well probably yes probably 8 or 9 for the whole town 8 or 9 for the whole town and now now there's over a hundred so so that shows you something about what's happened in the last 30 years now I've been practicing in the last 30 years and I've seen some major changes in the amount of veterinary work we do and the care that we can now give to horses and one striking example of that is is the use of the flexible endoscope which you yourself were very instrumental in the use of the flexible endoscope so when we got this piece of equipment from the human field we were able to look down the lungs of horses and thereby we could see if there's any mucus or whether there's any problem I was the first person to remember had a horse coat and a very very bright whose he might borrow might barrel and I felt that this was going to be a great step forward and I seem to remember we felt that horses on the in the in the mountains and things would be completely clean and it was only being brought into training stables that they got picked up all these things and we went scope some mounted ponies and found they were absolutely solid with me so that knocked our first theory into practice so other than scoping what's been the most beneficial not for the vets pockets the other aspect of course is lameness they used to when I first came to Newmarket they'd either be rested in the box for a week a month or three months and those you just had to make that choice but now again borrowing the technology from our Medical Corps we can do imaging we can do MRI we can do CT scanning we've got digital radiography but perhaps the most important thing that in my opinion is is the nuclear bone scanning now what that means is we can put a radioactive isotope into these young racehorses that have gone lame and it's it's targeted at these little stress fractures and the beauty of that of course is we can detect them before they become go from a stress fracture to a complete fractures so we can back off with the horse we can do a period of rest and rehabilitation and that stress fracture can then heal without going on to become a full fracture how long mr. D have you been the premier vetted Heath oh well I arrived in Newmarket thirty years ago and then due to misfortune your current vet was injured and very quickly I I slipped it I got some of the routine work overseen by a more senior vet and then the senior vet retired early I don't know why he retired only course doctor then I assume the mantle some 25 years ago and it's been a long and productive yes a relationship I do recall this year on Christmas Day I was just about to sit down for my Christmas lunch and there was a bit of a phone call saying I've got one very lame you better come and have a look at it so I did Julie trotted in and it was a foot obsessed needed the chute this far II wouldn't couldn't be found so I had to take the shoe off and drain this abscess on Christmas Day but I I went I went home with a warm glow I have absolutely no recollection I firmly imprinted on my mind I can tell you further the first Christmas Day for making it but there are it's a seven day job and the caring for the horses there's no compromise we want to do and if it's needed we we that's what were there for mr. day thank you very much you must go save them all at the race goes [Music] we're over on race course side the gallops which you see from the grandstands at the race course but are perhaps less well known than Warren Hill and which is always on every sort of postcard you see of Newmarket and the expert over here is Stewart Williams and well-known for getting absolutely everything out of every horse he trains and beating me at least three times a year not Chelmsford well I shouldn't get beat not often enough and Stewart would you just point out to everybody yeah what we've got here your yard where will you net you is over there yeah and the devil just Dyke is there that there's so much in between yeah that's right yes so on the other side of the racecourse we've got the back of the flat this is the flat where we're on now over the past the back of the flat is the South fields and that's a turf gallop there where you can go a mile and a quarter up and down mostly used in the winter was originally for the jump trainers but we now open it through the summer as well because there are fewer jump trainers in the town than there was then we come this side of the racecourse on our right hand side the disks over there the white disks if you can see those is the flat gallop we can go a mile and six on there it's primarily used in the spring and the autumn then we come this way over towards this side this is the summer canter and if you can see the difference in the grass then between the summer canter and the bit just where we are here this is the peat moss this is under laid with peat moss every two years have been done for over a hundred years I think and you can see the difference in the grass and even feel the texture as you walk in on it and of course over this side there's less traffic so it's a bit more relaxed that you're you're not bumping into yeah bearings except you accepted I suppose in the spring and the late autumn when the big staples come over well they don't come as much as they used to they don't come as much they used to so we very rarely have to queue to get on the canter whereas if you see Warren Hill every morning there's a queue to get on the can we very rarely have to give to get on the counter all the gallops here so it's I think we've got a lot more ground on this side of town per horse than we have on Warren Hill what do you like best about the market I just think it's it's such an easy place to train a racehorse because we don't have to worry about whether the gallops are going to be good in the morning it's a question of change which is choosing which one to go on that's the difficult thing it's not you know how I get up in the morning and the heath men will have done a fantastic job with the gallops the day before and I know that whichever one I choose it'll be good to go on and you've got a range of them to choose from we don't have to pick a stone up we don't have to trimmer head you're cut grass or do anything at all it's all done for us and this ground will be used today for galloping they will move it for tomorrow and that ground then will not be used again till next year at least one year and often sometimes - yeah sometimes - well thank you very much it's been fascinating and lovely to see and hopefully this autumn I shall get my own back on that very costly reverse at the Chelmsford last year where we are I hope thank you very much it is not easy this is the King Edward hall and used to be a training stable in the old days Bushwhacker de train here he must have been a helluva fella and then it was became the King Edward the seventh Memorial Gardens and in here is a long forgotten piece of New Market history we dug it out not so long ago and filmed it and we shamed everybody and all sorts of people sent money into the racing channel and and so the council have redone it and so that come and have a look at it anyway so this is the Memorial Gardens and they were given by Sir Ernest castle and so it became the Memorial Hall and the back here gradually fell into decay and it's now had a real makeover and we've turned it into a children's play area and very popular it is - as you see so tucked away tucked away here is the stone to commemorate Albert and sort of six seven years ago there was that we put a bit Anton on racing channel I suppose and you could only just read it if you put some water over it and an electricity cable a fellow had strung it straight across the middle anyway the program went out and to my surprise and everybody's surprised all this money was sent in not a lot but people were sending in a pound here and the fiver and a tenner and the council have redone it so here's old Albert near this place lies Albert by Waterloo all Moses they weren't sure which Dalian aunt over ends and he died from the bursting of a blood vessel whilst running in a trial in January 1831 Albert alas the race is run untimely sank the I Setting Sun but spotless is the iRacing name unconquered is thy fame when other steeds forgotten be still must my memory rest on thee I saw the heave thy latest sigh I saw the struggle fall and die so poor old Alva 1831 and he still remembered on practising so this is Newmarket cemetery I've got my little why I've got three slots there because I booked him years ago because I didn't want to have anybody next to me so I've got three slots forever but a lot of nice congenial people within within shouting distance lots of racing people here the ricca bees are all up there the Whigs who ran the jeweler's they're all there George Archibald rode Grand National winner he's there but the most famous of them all Fred Archer he's really quite hard to find he's tucked away here you've got to step over two or three graves to get to the great man the day of his funeral over 2,000 people came here every shop was shut every house had its blindfolds down and he'd shot himself at the age of 29 having been champion jockey ever since he was an apprentice he was apprenticed at Heath House he rode his first winner when he was 14 and weighed four stone 7 at Bangor indeed his wife had died in childbirth the child died they're both buried here with him he was wasting very hard he used to take a laxative called archers mixture and his nurse was looking after him and she came in with some soup and he sat up in bed and said are they coming to get me and shot himself the great Fred Archer still remembered probably pretty well by everyone with an interest of racing a great man [Music] so here we are back at Heath house it's been my home for 50 odd years I've had a fantastic time and I think we've just about done it now this is old spindrift - here he won 14 races from 21 starts I thought nobody had ever beat the record it had been set by the bard a hundred years before and immediately Bill O'Gorman did it twice so they were here these were all the people who trained here before me starting with Matt Dawson and ending at the moment with me the next fella is going to have to put his bark up above spinning after if you were to summarize Newmarket in in a sentence what would it it's tough it's professional it's organized and you better be good you

Channel: Racing TV

Views: 59,006

Rating: 4.8313255 out of 5

Keywords: racing uk, horse, sport, jockey, horseracing, Racing UK, Racing TV, Horse Racing, race, uk, racing, sir mark prescott, newmarket, Mark, Prescott

Id: kHcLsmOrJ_g

Length: 59min 51sec (3591 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 18 2019