You don’t often walk into a racing yard and find the trainer engrossed with two owners –apropos of horse names – discussing the role in the French Revolution of Count Mirabeau, but Dominic Ffrench Davis is a rounded man. When I first met Dominic 25 years ago he was a young start-up trainer who’d had to wait a year for a couple of winners. But these days he is being noticed for more than just the unusual moniker (worked into the family line by a female forbear with a touch of grandeur who didn’t fancy being just another Davis).
Top trainers argue that they would rather have four £50,000 horses than one worth £500,000
The first big race of the Flat, the Lincoln Handicap, went to the Ffrench Davis-trained Mr Professor, who was going so easily under David Egan two furlongs out that he could have carried two jockeys and still won. Even more importantly for the High View yard in Lambourn is Mr Professor, whom Dom had used in the autumn as a workhorse for some of the stable’s best inmates. He’s owned by Kia Joorabchian and his Amo Racing, the fastest-growing empire on the Flat.
The years inbetween at the less fashionable end of the sport weren’t always easy despite successes with horses like Sir Ninja and Indeed. You get the idea when Dominic’s wife Avery says: ‘The first priority was always to pay the wages – even if that made things tight at home.’ Getting the season’s winners into double figures was sometimes a decent result. But what keeps small-yard trainers going is the potential field marshal’s baton in the knapsack – the inner belief that given the right quality of horse they can do as well as the sport’s superstars. Now Dom has been given the Amo, so to speak, he is proving that he can.
Most of Amo’s other trainers, the likes of Ralph Beckett and Roger Varian, had stables full of bluebloods and a proven record of wins in Group races before Amo sent them horses. So why has he been included on the roster? ‘Pure chance,’ he says. Dominic got lucky in the sense that Amo Racing bought the yard adjoining his for pre-training then turned it into a racing yard for which they needed a licensed trainer and there he was – oven ready. Two years ago, Horses In Training listed 30 in the Ffrench Davis yard: this year he has 69 inmates listed, more than 30 of them Amo-owned. He can’t recall ever training anything previously which cost more than £85,000 but now there are potential stars in the yard, including the £300,000 Persian Dream and the €300,000 Padesha while the numbers keep changing. ‘Two-year-olds keep turning up from Ireland,’ as he puts it, from the Amo pre-training operation run by the much-respected Brazilian horseman Robson Aguiar.
Last season the winners rose from 13 to 23 and the High View yard has already had its first Group Two winner. Next target naturally is a Group One. Among those I saw a Kodiac filly called Lady Lovebug could be an early type on the all weather and Li Ban shows promise. The day we spoke Prince Alex won a decent handicap at Newbury and could go in again while there’s a promising hurdler for next winter in Ithaca’s Arrow.
I’ve heard even top trainers argue that they would rather have four £50,000 horses than one worth £500,000. ‘I’d be scared to bring it out of its box,’ one told me. So does Dominic now worry? Not for a minute: ‘I never look at it in terms of monetary value. A horse is a horse. We treat them all the same because we love them. That’s why we are in the game.’ Says Avery, ‘He’s so calm this man. If he wasn’t so laid back he’d be in a box’, although the new levels of success have acquainted them with the nastier side too of the social media trolls. ‘If high profile horses get beat you get the most terrible things said on the phone like “We know where you live”.’
Dominic’s great-grandfather trained in Phoenix Park. He is the son of a Co. Meath vet and was brought up amid point to pointers. But apart from a brief diversion to nearby Letcombe Regis, Ffrench Davis has always been a Lambourn man. ‘Lambourn people come and go,’ he says, ‘but essentially they are all the same kind of people. We all speak to each other on a daily basis. There are several smaller yards and if you’ve got a decent horse and need something to work with it someone will always help you out. There are still country values here.’ As an employed trainer at one and his own master in the other he revels in the teamwork of the two adjacent yards. That teamwork was surely aided on the Friday I was there by the sight of Avery Ffrench Davis heading into the barn with a basketful of bacon rolls. You wouldn’t see that in Newmarket.
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