'Without Question the Greatest Trainer of my Lifetime': Stoute Hailed by Peers as Retirement Beckons 

Sir Michael Stoute, the ten-time champion trainer in Britain, has announced his intention to retire from the training ranks at the end of this season.

Now 78, Stoute is one of the longest-serving trainers in Newmarket, where he has been based since 1972. With more than 4,000 winners to his credit, he has been responsible for six Derby winners among his 16 British Classic triumphs, beginning with Shergar in 1981 and, most recently, the 2022 winner Desert Crown. 

“I would like to thank all my owners and staff for the support they have given me over the years,” he said in a statement issued through the Press Association on Tuesday morning. “It has been a great and enjoyable journey.”

Stoute, who was inducted into the QIPCO British Horseracing Hall of Fame in 2023, previously held the record for the most number of winners at Royal Ascot, his tally of 82 having only recently been overtaken by Aidan O'Brien, who is now on 91. He has also trained six winners of the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes, the Juddmonte International, the Eclipse, the Irish Oaks and the Falmouth Stakes, along with eight Lockinge Stakes victors and nine Yorkshire Oaks winners.

Born on the island of Barbados in the West Indies where his father was the chief of police, he moved to England in 1964 to work in racing, initially assisting Pat Rohan in Yorkshire. In the five decades since being granted his own licence, Stoute's name has become synonymous with some of the great thoroughbreds of the modern era. To the infamous and brilliant Shergar, whose Derby win came in the year in which Stoute was first crowned champion trainer, must be added the names Green Desert, Singspiel, Pilsudski, Workforce, Islington, Russian Rhythm, Opera House, Estimate, Conduit, Harbinger, Medicean and Crystal Ocean. Amid champions across all manner of distances on the Flat, he also trained the champion hurdler Kribensis. 

Even this list is but a small snapshot of a far greater body of work which hinged on training for some of the great owner-breeders of the day. With Stoute, the Aga Khan celebrated the Derby winners Shergar and Shahrastani as well as 2,000 Guineas winner Doyoun, and Kalanisi, who triumphed in the Queen Anne Stakes and was one of the trainer's seven winners at the Breeders' Cup in America. 

Cheveley Park Stud, Ballymacoll Stud, Juddmonte, the Niarchos family, Sheikhs Maktoum, Hamdan and Mohammed Al Maktoum, Meon Valley Stud and the Rothschild family feature on a glittering list of owner-breeders who kept Stoute's Freemason Lodge stocked with well-bred individuals. The most recent group winner to emanate from the stable is the Niarchos homebred Passenger, winner of the G2 Huxley Stakes at Chester in May, while James Wigan's Bay Bridge (GB) provided Stoute with his most recent Group 1 success when landing the Champion Stakes of 2022.

William Haggas, a fellow Newmarket trainer, paid tribute to his close friend. He told TDN, “He's a good pal, number one, but he is also without question the greatest trainer of my lifetime.

“They all compare him to Henry Cecil, but Henry, as good as he was, rather fell into training in that he took over from his father-in-law, whereas Michael started with absolutely nothing. He came over to Pat Rohan in the 60s. He won the Stewards' Cup and the Ayr Gold Cup in his second year training with two different horses – Alphadamus and Blue Cashmere – and he has been at the top of his game for an enormous amount of time. And while Henry preferred to race his horses at home, Michael for so long competed his horses abroad. He had a great desire to run his horses all over the world.”

Such campaigning led to top-class wins in America, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Hong Kong and the UAE, and he is the sole overseas trainer to have won the Japan Cup twice, with Singspiel and Pilsudski in 1996 and 1997.

Haggas continued, “He is the most determined man I've met. His brain is as sharp as a knife and his attention to detail is unbelievable. He is determined to be the best without shouting from this rooftops. He's a modest, very humble man but he is a very clever trainer.

“He has great humour, loves cricket, and he can also enjoy himself when the horses are sleeping. I've known him a long time and very well and he doesn't miss a trick. You won't be able to name all the brilliant horses he has trained, and how brilliantly he has trained them. He's a star: a five-star star.”

Certainly Newmarket Heath will be less characterful without Sir Michael Stoute crossing its turf every morning. The trainer can often be heard humming or whistling  – or a mixture of both – as he watches his horses at exercise. For many summers he was accompanied by his great friend, the legendary fast bowler Michael Holding. In a recent interview in Bloodstock Notebook, Holding said of Stoute, “To this day I remain in awe. He loves to talk cricket because I guess it takes his mind off the stress of training. He has an incredible memory. He writes imaginary notes about the horses in the middle of his palm with an imaginary pen and then rubs them out so that nobody sees them!”

Chris Richardson, manager of Cheveley Park Stud, which has had horses in training with Stoute for four decades, said “It has been a wonderful association and we wish him well in the future, but I will certainly miss those wonderful early mornings trying to second-guess what he saw, which was never easy. Normally you were trying to decode a 'boompedy-boom' or him whistling 'Don't Cry For Me Argentina'.”

He continued, “This is the 40th season that Patricia Thompson and the Thompson family have had horses with him. You can go back to the 1980s and fillies that we had, like Aim For The Top, who won the Firth of Clyde, Gay Gallanta winning the Queen Mary and the Cheveley Park Stakes, Red Carnival, who won the Cherry Hinton, and of course Russian Rhythm, who won four Group 1s. These were all fillies that we bought and then of course there were the horses that we bred over the years: Sacrament, Exclusive, Medicean, Red Bloom, Peeress, Integral, Veracious, Queen's Trust – the list goes on and on. He's had something like 37 individual group winners of over 70 races over the years for Cheveley Park Stud, which is phenomenal really.”

Stoute was made a director of the stud in the mid-1980s and Richardson said that his contribution to its success has been more than just as a trainer. He added, “He's brilliantly talented and with a great eye for a horse. For many years we would go round the yearling sales together, especially in America, and select two or three fillies, like Gay Gallanta and Red Carnival, who were stunning race fillies and became part of the foundation of what we are today.”

As if to underline the longevity of that successful partnership on the day on which Stoute announced his retirement, the juvenile filly Formal (GB) retained her unbeaten status on her second start at Leicester and formed the first half of a double on the card for trainer and owner. Ridden by Stoute's longtime ally Ryan Moore, Formal, a daughter of Dubawi (Ire) and former Freemason Lodge star Veracious (GB) (Frankel {GB}), is a fourth-generation Cheveley Park Stud homebred and won in the manner of a filly with a bright future. Perhaps she will give her trainer one last hurrah in Pattern company before he draws stumps.