Dow Up On The Downs

Clear Height. The sign on the stable gate is perfectly descriptive, but we are not on the High Moor in Middleham, looking down from a vantage point above the Lambourn Valley, or atop Warren Hill. This is Epsom.

It's a place known to racing fans the world over. Home, not to the oldest Classic but to the most significant, and to a racecourse which once teamed with every variant of human life in the Derby's heyday as Britain's foremost sporting outing.

At the evocatively named Clear Height Stables is trainer Simon Dow, who admits that he could sell tickets for people to watch London's New Year's Eve fireworks from his back yard. On this beautiful late summer morning it's easy to see his point. From his eyrie, Dow has the perfect view of the capital's cityscape, from the Wembley arch to Canary Wharf, some 15 miles to the north as the crow flies. Turn 180 degrees and the picture is markedly different, however.

As Dow's horses leave the stable for exercise every morning, they are immediately in the shadow of one of the world's most famous grandstands. Once having crossed that sacred turf on which champions are made or reputations torn asunder, the horses and their riders filter out onto the Epsom Downs, their morning exertions carried out on rolling gallops that would rival many facilities in more isolated settings.

“There's always the issue of operating an essentially rural, or certainly semi-rural, activity in an increasingly urbanised environment. And I think that all of us, wherever you are [training], unless you're completely out in the middle of nowhere on your own property, are experiencing that,” says Dow, whose biggest successes to date have come via the globetrotting multiple group winner Young Ern (GB) (Efisio {GB}) and, more recently, Mr Scaramanga (GB) (Sir Percy {GB}), who took the valuable Al Biddah Mile during Qatar's major racing festival last year.

“I was up in Middleham in the winter with Karl Burke, and you've got the same problems. It's a small village but you've still got cars on the road. We all have to put up with modern-day life and things changing, people not being quite so sympathetic to horses. But still, here, yes we can see the London skyline as we talk, and there's a huge expanse of incredible facilities here that are racing's best kept secret in a way—the Epsom gallops.”

Dow's a local man who grew up running cross-country races on the Downs. Drawn to racing when taken to local meetings by a school teacher, he is very clearly proud of the area's sporting heritage while discussing the training grounds and what he describes as “the jewel of the borough”. A long-serving Chairman of the Epsom Trainers' Federation, he is now Vice Chairman to Jim Boyle and is one of the town's greatest advocates.

“Most local people that you talk to really like having the horses here and recognise that the presence of the horses protects the Green Belt and the open space,” he says. “And also that Epsom Downs is flat and open with no scrub because of the presence of the training industry, not the racecourse. So if there wasn't the money coming in from the gallops fees, there wouldn't be the money to keep mowing the grass, and so on.”

Local cooperation aside, there's no escaping the fact that the number of horses and trainers in Epsom continues to decline. From just over 500 horses with 19 trainers in 1970, current-day figures stand at around 200 horses in 10 training yards. That's less than a 10th of the number in training in Newmarket, which has seen an increase in horses in recent years.

Dow, with 22 horses, works tirelessly, in common with many smaller trainers in the racing industry. By the time the TDN arrives in his yard at 7am, he's already ridden two horses, and he'll complete another three lots before heading to the races with two runners.

“I thought, when I started training when I was 23, that if I hadn't sorted it out by the time I was 30 I'd have got it out of my system and I'd still have enough time to stop and do a proper job. And now I'm 57 and I'm still thinking,” he says.

If he hadn't volunteered his age, it would be hard to guess. A natural fitness that comes with the daily physical exertion is paired with an enquiring mind receptive to the ever-changing demands of training. Clever people realise that there are always plenty of new tricks to be learned, and Dow is clearly still enamoured of a way of life that can be as mentally stressful as it is physically demanding.

“It's been a wonderfully rewarding thing, and I'm not even half done yet,” he says. “I've found it fascinating, and I've learned a lot about myself. But you learn a lot about people, not just about the horses. I think the most exciting thing, for me, is that as a horseman you continue to learn so much. It's like the universe expanding. Every time you do another year you think, 'I now realise how little I know'. By comparison, I've opened my mind up to learn a lot during this period. Whereas you can go at it quite closed-minded and you think, 'Well, I've done it for 10 years so I must know what I'm doing', but actually, the reverse is true. You just keep learning and learning and learning.”

The most important lesson to be learned for all trainers—alongside the important retention of staff—is how to attract new owners to the sport, and for Dow and his Epsom colleagues, the proximity to a busy capital city should be a bonus. For some reason, however, as a training centre it has fallen out of fashion. And without the support of owners, if training yards become vacant, the premium on land and house prices around London makes it much harder to prevent those stables being snapped up by property developers.

“We need to understand why Newmarket is overflowing with horses and the great and the good choose to have their horses there. Perhaps there would be some merit in some of those horses being more personally cared for in smaller environments,” Dow muses.

“I meet countless people that actually live in local villages to Epsom and have horses trained in Newmarket and haven't ever considered having them trained in Epsom. Why? It just doesn't make sense. It's very important to identify why that's the case.”

He is not alone in seeking answers. The Jockey Club, which owns the gallops and racecourse at Epsom, as it does in Newmarket, is involved, along with the BHA, in a project called The Epsom Vision. The taskforce is looking at ways to revitalise the training centre to attract both more trainers and owners. The fact that both Dow and his neighbour Jim Boyle are in the early stages of having new yards built, and that plans have been submitted to build another two 30-box stableyards in the town, is also a much needed shot in the arm.

If his fellow trainers have a similarly forward-looking approach to running their businesses as Dow, then it's hard to imagine that some progress won't be made in ensuring that this historic racing centre is preserved.

“Understanding what that client wants, and making sure that you can deliver it if you can, is extremely important,” he says. “In 2018, you kind of need to be five different people doing the job: you want one person in charge of your staff, one person in charge of your clients. But you also want to be doing this stuff with the horses and making sure the whole thing just binds and it all works. But we mustn't lose sight of the customer. Retention of clients is very important.”

Dow continues, “It's been heartening to see that the leaders of the industry recognise the significance and importance of Epsom as a training centre, and possibly that it's been a little bit forgotten. You could say I'm passionate about the place. It's almost exclusive. The facilities really are first class. You can train any sort of horse here.”

We live in different times to the melee depicted in painter William Powell Frith's celebrated 1850s masterpiece 'The Derby Day'. The fact that Epsom was, and still is, so easily accessible to a mass of city-dwellers, is also today one of the elements which poses the biggest threat to its continuation as a famous base from which to prepare racehorses. One senses that while Dow remains in the town with a training licence, the very idea that Epsom's long tradition could be halted would be met with a stern, “Not on my watch”.

He says, “This is where the Derby originated. There's probably 100 races around the globe now which have Derby in their title. But there's only one Epsom Derby and this is where it all started. So we've got history and we've got the site and the location. It's very emotive.”