Major Dick Hern and Enable have been named as the latest inductees to the British Horseracing Hall of Fame, with their induction ceremony set to take place on Qipco British Champions Day at Ascot on October 18.
The brilliant Juddmonte homebred Enable raced for five seasons, garnering 11 Group 1 victories in four different countries. The daughter of Nathaniel made history by becoming the first horse to win the King George VI & Queen Elizabeth Stakes three times. She is also one of only eight horses to win the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe twice.
Enable's trainer John Gosden said, “I've never known a filly like her that could take the training and the racing. She probably did something that may never be done again as a three-year-old to go and win the Oaks, then the Irish Oaks followed by the King George, then to York to win the Yorkshire Oaks and then dust them all off in the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe. I don't know if I'll ever be lucky enough to see another filly who could do something like that. She was without doubt one of those absolute racemares of a lifetime.”
Simon Mockridge, Juddmonte's general manager in the UK, added, “I think her first win at Chantilly in the Arc was a real highlight. It was away from Longchamp, and it was a very special day because her draw wasn't perfect and it was a big field, and she ran away with that race. As a three-year-old she was quite imperious. She had seven starts, six wins by a cumulative 24 lengths. She was very, very good that year.”
Multiple Classic-winning trainer Major Dick Hern died in May 2002 at the age of 81, and his posthumous inclusion in the British Racing Hall of Fame caps a career in which he was champion trainer on four occasions, in 1962, 1972, 1980 and 1983. His British Classic triumphs included three Derby winners in Troy (1979), Henbit (1980) and Nashwan (1989). He also became the first trainer to saddle five winners of the King George VI & Queen Elizabeth Stakes at Ascot, plus won every Irish Classic at least once.
Hern joins his fellow trainers Vincent O'Brien, Sir Henry Cecil, Sir Michael Stoute and Aidan O'Brien in the Hall of Fame.
Panel member Brough Scott, who has narrated a special video to celebrate Hern's achievements, said, “A great trainer, and a great man, Dick Hern is the most deserved of entries to the Hall of Fame. He was a champion; champion trainer, handler of the greatest of horses, and a champion in life itself.
“Of all his achievements, nothing can match what Dick did with Nashwan in the summer of 1989. By then paralysed from a hunting fall, he had to use his eyes, not his hands, to feel for fitness and at Newmarket and then at Epsom, Nashwan was a training masterpiece.”
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