An Englishman In Chantilly

Thirty years on from the name J E Hammond first appearing on a trainer's licence, the man in question is still fully absorbed with the daily puzzle of balancing the flighty mind and sometimes fragile limbs of the young thoroughbred.

John Hammond has spent most mornings of those three decades immersed in the shaded forest of Chantilly's vast training centre, where a seemingly endless maze of sand tracks through ancient trees opens up to the surprisingly stark stretch of famous grass gallops known as Les Aigles. Across this hallowed turf at the heart of France's most famous racing town have flown many of the country's great racehorses, whose preparation in this idyllic setting has led to achievements long etched into the annals of racing history. Hammond's own chapter of that tome includes such names as Polar Falcon, Sought Out (Ire), Imperial Beauty, Sarah Lynx (Ire), Dear Doctor (Fr), Nuclear Debate and his two Arc winners, Suave Dancer (GB) and Montjeu (Ire).

“I just came here for a year's work experience and Lester Piggott got me a job with Andre Fabre,” recalls the Englishman who by that stage had already completed a stint in Newmarket with Patrick Haslam.

“I enjoyed it so much I stayed for a second year and I didn't really have the family connections or money to start in England so I just thought I'd start here. It was more circumstantial than big planning.”

Despite having spent more than half of his life in France and most of his formative years in Ireland, the 56-year-old remains quintessentially English, his slightly dishevelled charm and morning mug of tea tell-tale signs that he hasn't perhaps fully embraced French life even though he states his enjoyment of “absorbing another culture”.

It would be folly, however, to mistake Hammond for some bumbling ex-public schoolboy who has coasted through life with better contacts than brains. Every question asked of him receives a long, thoughtful pause before a carefully constructed and articulate response. We may live in the era of empty soundbites, often containing no more than 140 characters, but it is worth such pauses to digest fully the reflections and observations of this particular trainer.

“I was genuinely lucky–and I seriously mean that. I had a good connection with Cash Asmussen and he was helpful in bringing some owners my way,” he says. “It's funny, if you're lucky enough to get a bit of early success people will come to you. Owners like going to the new kid on the block. Ironically, it's probably a bit more difficult now. I'm rather out of fashion and it's harder now than when I started out. But that's fine that people go to the young guy coming up.”

He adds with a wry smile, “As the saying goes, 'I was him once'.”

The bigger names may be missing from his string that currently numbers 45 horses, but there is no air of resignation at his stunning mini-chateau of a stable on the Chemin des Aigles. Far from it, in fact.

Coaxed by his energetic former assistant trainer-turned-marketing supremo Lizzy Sainty, Hammond has recently launched a well-designed website and, like all of his more junior counterparts, has accounts on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. To say that he's embraced the age of social media may be pushing it, but he is a willing participant, nonetheless.

“In this day and age I think everybody has to do it, whatever industry you're in,” he notes. “You have to be careful with Twitter–it's a bit like walking around with a loaded gun–but Chantilly is a lovely place and it's great to share photos of the horses training in the morning, I think people enjoy that.”

He continues, “If you're Aidan O'Brien or Andre Fabre you don't need to do it, but most trainers need to be attracting new owners and this is now part of our world.”

In a racing scene which is now so often dominated by stables with several hundred horses, it's harder for trainers of smaller numbers, even those who can wear the badge saying 'been there, done that', to remain at the forefront of owners' minds.

“Probably to stay at the top level you have to keep the numbers up and I've never really wanted to have a big string,” admits Hammond. “At one stage I took a conscious decision to slightly cut the numbers down–we had four kids and though some people do manage to make that balance between spending enough time with their children and being successful with a big string of horses, I think it's difficult. Then when your numbers go down a bit there's obviously less chance of having good horses.”

From his beginning, on the opposite side of Chantilly to where he is now, with just a handful of patrons, the horses soon came his way and in just his second full season with a licence, Hammond enjoyed a memorable weekend in October 1989 when Passionara (Fr) and Royal Touch (GB) won Group 2 races in France and Germany within 24 hours. Around that time, a yearling colt by Green Dancer, who would come to be known as Suave Dancer, found his way to the Hammond yard and provided his trainer with his first major breakthrough at the highest level by winning the Prix du Jockey Club followed by the Irish Champion S. and the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe. Those achievements would be bettered eight years later by the great Montjeu.

“Suave Dancer was a better horse over a mile and a quarter than a mile and a half, even though he won the Jockey Club and the Arc,” offers Hammond. “When he won the Irish Champion Stakes he put up an amazing performance–he galloped all over them–and rather sadly, at four, we were aiming to run him in the Jacques le Marois but he got a tendon injury and that was that. But I think he had the speed to do that.”

Of Montjeu, who emulated Suave Dancer by winning the Prix du Jockey Club and Arc and also landed the Irish Derby, King George VI & Queen Elizabeth S., Tattersalls Gold Cup and Grand Prix de Saint-Cloud, he recalls, “Montjeu stayed every yard of a mile and a half and he had great acceleration, so he was probably the better horse at that distance.

“Before he even raced we felt Montjeu was pretty special but there had been a few other false dawns and–I'm sure I speak for every trainer here–you can sometimes have horses who you like very much at home and they can even go and win first time out but for many different reasons, whether mentally or physically, a wheel just comes off. But Montjeu was very special because he just kept on improving and, despite the fact that he was a handful in the mornings, he had an extraordinary capacity to then lie down and sleep in his box and that saved him. I don't think he'd have lasted as long as he did otherwise.”

Montjeu may not have run at Epsom himself–a deliberate ploy on his trainer's part–but he has made a lasting impression on the history of the Derby. From his first crop, he sired the first two home, Motivator (GB) and Walk In The Park (Ire)–the latter trained by Hammond–and his record was enhanced with the victories of Authorized (Ire), Pour Moi (Ire) and Camelot (GB), who went so close to becoming a Triple Crown winner.

Hammond continues, “When any trainer looks back on a horse they've trained, we'd all say we'd have done things differently here or there, and there were a few things I'd perhaps have done differently with Montjeu. But I think I made some good calls. I was very happy I didn't run him in the Criterium de Saint-Cloud at two, even though I'm sure he'd have won it. I was happy that I didn't run him in the Epsom Derby, even though on the formbook he'd have won it. Mentally he was still a bit delicate and I think Epsom might have just blown it for him. Of course I'd love to win the Derby, but I'll never look back and say I should have run him in it.”

This is perhaps the essence of the Hammond training philosophy: aiming to do the right thing for the horse at all times. That knowledge only comes from experience, and even then the sands are ever shifting.

“It's important to take each horse one by one. Our whole industry turns around the Classics and when you have horses that compete in those races it's very motivating,” he admits. “But I will go to my grave believing that there are a bunch of horses out there who get messed up and missed out on by having the hammer dropped on them either too soon or at moments when they can't take it. It is very difficult to tell where that balance is. I've been lucky enough to win the French Derby twice but it could have been four times as there were two that I messed up.”

But he concedes that the expense involved in owning racehorses adds pressure to the situation. “Understandably if they're no good people want to get rid of horses as soon as possible but sometimes you have to wait a while to find out if they are any good or not. It's not easy being an owner. It involves swallowing a series of disappointments for which you have the pleasure of paying through the nose. Fortunately those disappointments are interspersed by moments of truly intense joy. I have been blessed to train for some wonderfully understanding people; I am very grateful for their custom and I thank them for that.”

He continues, “When I look back on some of the good horses' careers I realise that they are almost defined by the races that they didn't run in. Once you realise you've got a good horse you feel a bit like John Wayne walking into the OK Corral with two pistols full of bullets and that you can get away with doing anything, but that's not so.”

Amusing though that image may be, a gun-slinging cowboy Hammond is not. Instead, he's one who quietly shadows his horses across the road and back from his stable to Les Aigles, via a gateway touchingly named 'Porte Montjeu' by France Galop, which owns the training grounds. This he repeats four times daily, an eagle eye on each of his charges as they set off in small groups for a hack canter here, a stronger piece of work there. It is doubtless this dedicated and meticulous approach which has kept some big international patrons, such as Sheikh Hamdan, the Niarchos family and OTI Racing, involved in his stable.

“I could probably do with a few more horses than I have at the moment,” he concedes. “One or two very good Group horses in the yard makes a big difference. But that's ok. I still very much like the nuts and bolts of training horses. I enjoy going out to do it every morning. As everybody knows it's a job with lots of frustrations but it's a fascinating way to spend your day and I never get up on Monday wishing it was Friday.”

Being able still to regard that job as a calling rather than a chore despite every trainer's multiple daily distractions in running a modern-day business is doubtless a key factor in his enduring love for the game. And besides, Hammond has a matter of national pride to uphold.

“There's been a long history of English trainers in Chantilly,” he says. “When I started there was Charlie Milbank, Martin Blackshaw, Jonathan Pease and then Rupert Pritchard-Gordon, Richard Gibson, but for the moment there's just me. I'm the last man standing.”