Happy Families As Teals Enjoy Group 1 Success

If you're not a fan of dogs, then the pack of baying Bassett Hounds and terriers which greets visitors to Windsor House Stables may not be the reception you desire. Once through the gates with all limbs and fingers still attached, the welcome becomes much warmer, and on a particularly hot summer's day it extends to tea and chocolate cake for breakfast.

The combination of horses, dogs and cake is a tried and trusted method for lifelong happiness, and probably the only way in which it could be improved is by the addition of champagne. The fizz has been flowing freely at the home of Roger Teal, his wife Sue and their son Harry of late, as indeed it should in the season in which their stable has enjoyed its first Group 1 winner. The cake on this fine morning is to mark Sue's birthday.

With the July Cup now safely in his clutches, the stable star Oxted (GB) (Mayson {GB}) is relaxing in the shade of his box, occasionally poking his head out to flatten his ears at his full-brother Chipstead (GB) next door. Quite right, too. The 2-year-old may look uncannily like his older brother but he has a long way to go to earn his respect.

The siblings are named for nearby villages to Cheval Court Stud in Surrey, where they were bred by the Homecroft Wealth Racing team of Stephen Piper, Tony Hirschfield and David Fish. But their home now is in the heart of the village of Lambourn, where the Teals have settled in well since their move in December to the yard owned by new ROA president Charlie Parker.

As we head up to the Mandown gallop with the stable's second lot, several fellow trainers flag down Teal's car in passing to wish his wife a happy birthday and, according to the trainer, the messages of congratulation since Oxted's big win have also been numerous.

“We've had members of the public writing letters to us and I can't thank everyone enough,” he says. “I had an email from Ralph Beckett, Henry Candy rang me, which was really nice of him, and James Fanshawe went out of his way to say 'well done' the other day. It's been really nice and everyone has been so kind.”

In Lambourn, the self-styled 'Valley of the Racehorse', the racing community is a tightknit one and readily celebrates Grand National winners along with sprinting stars. In fact, Oxted is not just the second July Cup winner to be trained at Windsor House Stables but is also stabled in the same box once occupied by the 1993 winner Hamas (Ire) (Danzig), trained by Peter Walwyn.

Teal continues, “I went to the Co-op the other day and the lady there asked me how Oxted is. We've been welcomed really well into the village and everyone here gets behind the racing yards. On the gallops, trainers I haven't seen for a couple of weeks are still congratulating me now.”

Teal seems a little surprised by the warmth of response to the biggest moment for his stable which has been on the rise for a while, through the likes of group winners Steele Tango (Okawango) and Kenzai Warrior (Karakontie {Jpn}). Indeed, Tip Two Win (GB) (Dark Angel {Ire}) came closest to giving the trainer his biggest breakthrough when finishing a length and a half behind Saxon Warrior (Jpn) (Deep Impact {Jpn}) to take second in the 2000 Guineas two years ago.

Steele Tango and Kenzai Warrior were both breeze-up purchases, picked up for roughly £75,000 for the pair, while Tip Two Win and Oxted are both homebreds for small British breeders. Thankfully, history has demonstrated repeatedly that spending fortunes on bloodstock is not the only path to success, but equally it's not hard to imagine what Teal and his team could achieve granted a higher level of support from some bigger names. Too many equine equivalents of Fabergé eggs in one basket can take the shine off the sport for followers, which is one of the reasons that Oxted's victory was greeted with widespread delight beyond Lambourn.

The Teals, however, are not in the business of wishful thinking. Roger and Sue started working in racing at the age of 16 and met when they both ended up working for Philip Mitchell in Epsom. From stints as an amateur rider and as Mitchell's assistant trainer, Roger took out his training licence in 2007, and started out in Epsom. Sue, by his side, filled every role a racing stable has to offer: from work rider to mucking out, racing secretary and gallops photographer as well as raising two sons. The couple are still very much hands-on when it comes to the daily workload and are content with how their stable has grown to fill the 50 boxes available at their new yard, even in the midst of a global pandemic.

“We both still muck out now,” Sue says. “We can't let go, it's us, that's what we were brought up doing. We were stable lads and we were brought up mucking out. I like to be involved in the yard and making sure everything's alright.”

She continues, “We moved on 1 Dec. last year. It was all going well and then we got locked down. We had tripled our rent and we thought 'what's going to happen now?' But thankfully the owners were very good and stood by us, and we just continued to grow during lockdown. Now the yard is full, which is very good, and staff numbers have gone up and we've got a good team here.”

That team has recently been boosted by the return of their younger son, Harry, who also enjoyed a stint as an amateur, riding winners on the Flat and over jumps before becoming a conditional jump jockey in 2016. Now back home and working as assistant to his father, Harry admits with a broad grin that he nabbed the daily ride on Oxted from him mother who had put in much of the early work on the horse when he was a youngster.

“He's just a pleasure to ride,” says Harry of their Group 1 winner. “He did his first piece of work the day we found out that we were going on lockdown and he was very impressive in that piece of work, so we were gutted that we had to stop.”

The Teals did not have to wait for too long after the resumption of British racing on June 1 to have their belief in the horse backed up by his improved performance on the racecourse. Last seen publicly in September 2019 when winning the competitive Portland H., the 4-year-old bounced out at Newmarket's delayed Guineas meeting to land his first black-type success in the G3 Abernant S., also giving champion apprentice Cieren Fallon his first group win.

Harry continues, “Every time we worked him I was just gobsmacked. I nicknamed him 'The Beast' from quite an early stage and he just kept getting better and stronger. Going into Newmarket I was very excited. I'm one that makes my opinions known and I was very bullish about him. And he's just got better and better since then.”

His father adds, “As a 3-year old, he came out and won his first start really impressively and we stepped him up to listed company at Newbury. There have been a few little blips, but you get that in racing, but we knew we had a good horse and we knew he was always going to improve from where he was.”

The Teals and Oxted's trio of owners kept the faith with Fallon Jr for the horse's first try at the highest level and were duly rewarded for their loyalty. While more Group 1 targets are on the agenda for this season, Roger is wisely keen to play the long game.

He says, “We're not going to over-face him. He's a 4-year-old and he's a gelding so there's no commercial value for him to go to stud. If we mind him well I'm sure we can maybe go back next year and have a crack at the July Cup again. He has stamped himself as a very good horse and we've just got to do the best by him and not get greedy and not over-race him.”

He adds, “At the moment, the Haydock Sprint Cup is our target. I think he likes a bit of time between his races. I think we've learnt a lesson from last year maybe, when the two disappointing runs were when we maybe just went back a bit soon, but then again he was still growing and he was unfurnished last year. But I'm a bit patient like that, I don't like to over-face any of them if I can help it. I like to give them space between their races.”

While there should be a number of good racing seasons ahead for Oxted, those connected with him can also look forward to the debut of his young brother, who is already pleasing his trainer.

“Chipstead is a little tank,” says Teal with a smile. “He's a bit the opposite from when Oxted was at this stage as a 2-year old, as he was very weak and backward, whereas Chipstead seems to be more forward and a bit more precocious. He worked very well last Saturday so he is showing the right signs.”

Whatever Chipstead goes on to achieve, he will have a job to replace his brother in the eyes of the Teal family who have relished the success Oxted has brought the stable.

“It's what we get up for every morning, it's what we dream of,” says Sue. “We started off very small and we just worked hard and built our way up, so to actually finally get that Group 1 winner, it was amazing. There were a few sore heads on the Sunday morning. I'm very proud of Roger. He deserves it. He works hard and he always has done.”

As for the trainer, he's already focusing his efforts on the next big win. He adds, “You have a taste of it and you want more of it. So let's hope we can go back and do it again.