By Tom Peacock
Should anyone fancy starting up a new racecourse in Britain, one guarantee is that Ian Williams will have runners there on the opening day.
One of Britain's most successful dual-code trainers is justifiably proud of what he understands to be the unique achievement of saddling a winner at each of the country's Flat and jumps tracks, and it seems to have spawned into a minor obsession.
“I had a feeling, so I sat down with the National Trainers' Federation diary one day and started ticking of the racecourses, and I realised I only had a couple left to go,” he explained. “I don't think there's anybody else and I can't think of anybody who has done it going back over the years, more so then when you were either Flat or National Hunt. Not many people would want to travel all ends of the bloody country either, but we're so well-placed to do that, it makes it a little bit easier for us than others.”
“The last initially was Thirsk–it's a very nice course but not a great trip for us,” he added. “It took a while before eventually everything clicked and Cruise Tothelimit (Ire) won there in 2014.
“Then, of course, they reopened Chelmsford and stuck an all-weather track at Newcastle, it started the game again but we did that too luckily.”
Williams has been at Dominion Stables at Alvechurch near Birmingham, a modern and self-contained premises developed with the businessman Pat Kelly, for the vast majority of his 21 years with a licence. Not a famous training centre but certainly a geographical one, it allows the net to be spread far and wide.
His string of 80 is currently split around 50-50, with some crossover. Even without the likes of the injured Ballyalton (Ire) (Pierre {GB}), who provided a first Cheltenham Festival victory, he will be close to a half-century of winners during the National Hunt campaign and could reach around that figure again if the Flat year goes well.
“Jumping-wise it has been one of our best, numerically as well as prize-money,” he said. “There has been a nice uplift in quality and reliability of performance has been good. The horses have been healthy for a couple of years, which has helped enormously. We learned our lesson from a bad series of infections we had five or six years ago, we changed our procedures and our general management–that's certainly been of huge benefit.”
If not at Cheltenham, Williams's all-purpose team can deliver some exciting payoffs. Munsef (GB) (Zafonic) progressed from a Chester claimer on his stable debut to finishing 12th in the G1 Melbourne Cup just over four months later while sprinter Sir Maximilian (Ire) (Royal Applause {GB}) swiped valuable prizes at the 2015 and 2016 Dubai Carnivals.
“It makes for a good business model,” said Williams, who was tutored by National Hunt luminaries Jenny Pitman and Martin Pipe as well as Frenchman Francois Doumen, perhaps the ultimate jack of all trades. “My heart is really in the jump racing but we set up pretty good figures on the Flat. We don't aim for speedy 2-year-old types but I think we do well with the 3-year-olds and upwards.”
“Work mornings can be interesting,” he noted. “They're pretty much mixed and matched, sometimes they will work with each other, depending on how much pace or stamina we want to do. Levels of work and the amount of work for the jumpers is far more than for the Flat horses but the basics are the same. Healthy, well-fed and well-exercised horses should be capable of doing their job if they're placed in the right races.”
A trace of Williams's background betrays what seems to be a methodical approach to his business. His father Billy trained the useful chaser Tom's Little Owl but his son first spent a year studying accountancy (“I found it a little tedious”) before managing a William Hill betting shop in Devon.
“It was never my intention to train but I fell into it after working as assistant for Jenny Pitman,” he said. “I thought I'd be very privileged to have the chance to train a dozen horses at some stage, but it grew into something bigger. I suppose if had my time again I'd probably be a horse racing accountant, even though I'm not sure there's a lot more money in that than training racehorses. It would probably have been more sensible, but who wants to be sensible.”
From Fakenham to Ffos Las and Kelso to Kempton, Williams is sure to continue churning out the winners if the opportunity is there. Chester's May meeting, though, should be the most useful gauge of his smartest Flat crop for 2017.
“Speedo Boy (Fr) (Vision D'Etat {Fr}) has done very well, he won the first listed race of the season in France and will probably go for the mile-and-a-quarter Dee S.,” he revealed. “Duke Of Clarence (Ire) (Verglas {Ire}) is a horse we have for Dr Marwan Koukash and we've been preparing him for the Chester Cup, a race we won a few years ago with Bulwark (Ire) (Montjeu {Ire}). Sir Maximilian ran well this winter in Dubai, even though he wasn't able to win, and it's probably the plan to have him go to Chester for the conditions event that he won last year. He's been great but he's fragile and needs to be looked after.”
He continued, “We have some nice handicappers–Banditry (Ire) (Iffraaj {GB}) has won three on the Flat and London Prize (GB) (Teofilo {Ire}) was looking progressive on the Flat before he went hurdling and there should be no reason why he shouldn't continue to improve.
“Glorious Goodwood winner Shady McCoy (English Channel) was well below par on his reappearance but has come back in good form and will step up on his performance I'm sure,” Williams added. “There's a lot to look forward to on the Flat.”
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