A Hot Winter For Williams

As the British winter continues to work its way through the alphabet of storms, a fiendish amalgamation of Storm Emma and the 'Beast From The East' turned the country from green to white, temporarily pushing all thoughts of impending Classic trials to the back of one's mind.

One man who hasn't minded the prolonged icy spell is Newmarket's own winter king, Stuart Williams, who has had his select string in fine order over the past few months to be challenging for all-weather championship honours.

As Williams walks out of the back of his Diomed Stables onto Newmarket's vast training grounds, in full view is the Rowley Mile grandstand, which will buzz with anticipation on the first week of May as the British Classic season gets underway. These last few months the trainer has seen more of Lingfield, Wolverhampton and Chelmsford, but he's not complaining.

“They upped the prize-money on the all-weather a few years ago and we took a conscious decision to target the better races,” says Williams, who this year celebrates his 25th season with a training licence. “Now we have the 2-year-olds pre-trained elsewhere rather than doing them ourselves as we always used to. Instead of having my best people breaking in the yearlings, which is the most important phase of their life, I now have the best people getting the horses ready to race through the winter. The 2-year-olds are on their way in now and we're getting to the end of our all-weather season during which we targeted the high-value races and tried to win as many as we can.”

It's a strategy which has reaped dividends. At the time of writing, Williams sits in second place in the table for the all-weather trainers' championship, his 18 wins being three fewer than leader Mark Johnston. In third is Archie Watson with 29 wins but less prize-money earned, highlighting Williams's focus on quality. Moreover, with runners from his stable having finished in the first three on 66 occasions this winter and with never more than 50 horses under his care, Williams is outgunning trainers with far greater firepower at their disposal.

“We've done extremely well,” he concedes. “Obviously we have to have the owners' agreement to do this. The staff have to work very hard to help us to achieve what we're doing and they have contributed enormously to the success. The finals' day [Mar. 30] is so lopsided with prize-money that we're not going to finish top of the prize-money table, which we have been most of the winter. You just have to win a race or two on that day and you're in front as the races are worth so much money. We have one or two to run with chances–Swift Approval (Ire) probably, Royal Birth (GB) might go for the sprint. I don't think we'll run Stellar Surprise (GB)–she'd probably get into the fillies' race but I think seven furlongs is a bit sharp for her round there. But she's won two £27,000 races this winter and we'll probably save her for something on the turf. Suzi's Connoisseur (GB) might go there again, so we have some options for the day.”

Unlike many people who have ended up working in British racing's headquarters, Williams was actually born and bred in Newmarket to parents both steeped in the sport. “Mum was one of only three female workers in racing at the time,” he recalls. I was born here and it was my ambition to be Lester Piggott, which I was soon disabused of when I learnt to ride. I had a few race rides but there were so few apprentice races at the time and I decided that if I couldn't be a jockey I wanted to stay in racing. It was all I knew, and I knew I could ride and look after horses well but that's only such a small part of training now–there are all the other things that go with it.”

All those other things include marketing oneself to prospective owners, something this particular trainer admits is a weak spot. That task is made that much more difficult without a raft of flagship horses for headline meetings. Yet many observers of the sport on a day-to-day basis are likely to have Williams on their watchlist as one of the shrewdest placers of horses. Indeed, his longevity in the game owes plenty to hard-knocking handicappers who win and win. These include the likes of Sendintank (GB) (Halling), who equalled a seasonal record when winning 10 handicaps throughout 2004, a year in which he was never out of the first three in 14 starts. Similarly consistent was Eton Rifles (Ire) (Pivotal {GB}), who won five listed races over three seasons after being bought by Williams at the Horses-in-Training Sale.

“Concer Un (GB) was the horse that really put me on the map,” he says of the 10-time winner. “He was bred by Edgar Lloyd, a farmer in Cheshire, and he was quite unfashionably bred, by Lord Bud (GB) out of a mare who won a bumper. He ended up wining two years in a row at the Ebor meeting and breaking the track record at York when he beat Hawksley Hill (Ire), who went on to be narrowly beaten in the Breeders' Cup Mile.”

Williams adds, “Through the year we'd generally have 50 horses in but we never actually have 50 in at the same time. I think it's a different thing training the horses I train and trying to win the races I win to having 50 of Sheikh Mohammed's horses and trying to make them into group horses. Of course I'd like the opportunity to do that but whether I could do that job as well as I do this one I just don't know, as I'm just not dealing with that many really nice horses a lot of the time, so we have to cut our cloth to fit.”

The smart money would be on Williams to succeed however his stable was tailored. It takes a good horseman to coax the best from more moderate horses, and whatever the level of ability shown by an individual, the mark of a really good horseman is in keeping a horse fully engaged mentally while undertaking a physically taxing pursuit.

In this respect, Williams had a chance to learn from the best, with Olivier Douieb and Bart Cummings being just two of the trainers he worked for during an apprenticeship which took him away from his home town to Australia, America, France and Scandinavia. In Newmarket he has worked alongside some of the sport's most iconic names but he has no desire to emulate some of those when it comes to the size of racing string.

“The increase of really big stables is quite extraordinary and it's not just in Newmarket that it's happening,” says Williams.

“I'd rather, if I could, be like Sir Mark Prescott and limit the stable to about 60 to 65 horses and just try to raise the quality of the horses coming in. We've been doing that all along and it's my ambition and the owners' ambitions to operate at a higher level. But if you think that something like 80% of the horses in training are rated below 80 and everybody wants the ones rated above 80. So we try to get as many of those as we can into the yard–it makes economic sense and it makes us feel better if you're winning a better class of race. That's what targeting these races on the all-weather has been about.”

The increase of all-weather fixtures in Britain has not been to everyone's liking but as someone who grew up in the town famed for its two turf courses, Williams is a firm believer in the benefits of the rise of artificial surfaces. He says, “Before all-weather racing, Newmarket used to shut down for six months. We used to do roadwork everywhere. But with training fees as they are, if that was still the case now I think the horses wouldn't stay in training, so you'd have to shut the yard down for three months and that's just not a viable business. From that point of view, the increase in all-weather racing has kept the smaller yards going.”

While the racecourse results of the winter have done much to boost spirits, the death of the trainer's stepfather and respected stud owner David Shekells at the end of January has been a recent personal blow for Williams and his mother Carol. Described by Williams as his “biggest cheerleader”, Shekells's influence has been keenly felt via the stable's leading scorer this all-weather season, Excellent George (GB) (Exceed And Excel {Aus}). The 6-year-old, bred by Shekells at his Old Mill Stud in partnership with Williams and Jonathan Parry, has notched three wins at Chelmsford since Dec. 17, winning the day after his co-breeder's funeral and again on Saturday. His full-brother Royal Birth (GB) was the stable star of last winter when winning the Listed Hever Sprint S. for the Morley family, long-term supporters of Williams.

As a fresh batch of juveniles arrives at Diomed Stables, the start of the turf season is now just over a fortnight away, preceding Lingfield's valuable All-Weather Championships finale on Good Friday by six days. For Williams, the winter has not been as tough to endure as it has for a number of his colleagues.

“That sort of success makes days like this feel that they're not that bad,” he says as he takes refuge from the persistent snow between lots in his office. “It can he hard if you've no champions to look forward to but having the horses in form and running well through the winter has given all of us a real boost.”