Trainer Ben Cecil Passes Away at 56

After a years-long long battle with cancer, Southern California-based trainer Ben Cecil has passed at the age of 56. He leaves behind his wife Kirsty, and two children, Francesca and Hugo.

A near 30-year training career yielded 325 victories and nearly $25 million in prize money. He conditioned several Golden State heavy weights including multiple Grade I winners Golden Apples and Squeak, along with top-flight winners Donna Viola and Passinetti.

As nephew to legendary British trainer Henry, Cecil's lineage suggested no other career path than the one taken. His father David also trained for a period. Cecil's route to the California training ranks was a bit of a circuitous one, however.

In the late 1980s, he worked as an exercise rider and groom at Colin Hayes's sprawling Lindsey Park training center near Adelaide in Australia. He then spent a brief spell as a cattle driver on a remote outback ranch.

Cecil then returned to the UK, where he worked for Ian Balding (during the years of top-class winners Silver Fling and Dashing Blade), and for St. Leger winning trainer Mark Tompkins.

Cecil's California dreams began as pupil assistant to trainer Gary Jones, when the stable was armed with Hall of Famer Best Pal. He then moved his assistant's tack to young trainer Rodney Rash.

“He was the toughest person I ever worked for,” Cecil told the Thoroughbred Racing Commentary in 2017, about his time working for Rash.

“But it's probably what I needed as well. When you're pupil assistant and you're late for work, it's just like anyone else. But when you're assistant–and particularly for Rodney Rash–you're in big trouble if anything goes wrong. Basically, I grew up very quickly.”

After a little more than a year-and-a-half in that position, Cecil was thrust into the saddle, handed the stable's reins when Rash passed away suddenly from a blood disorder. Cecil handled the transition with aplomb, maintaining the barn's high standards over subsequent years.

Donna Viola won the 1997 GI Gamely Stakes in a plunging finish. The former John Gosden trained Squeak picked up a brace of Grade Is during the second half of 1998.

Cecil was patience personified in nursing Passinetti back from a serious tendon injury to victory in the 2003 GI San Juan Capistrano. Cecil's most prolific masterpiece was the Gary Tanaka-owned Golden Apples, who won three Grade Is between 2001 and 2002.

Compared to the rich pickings of his early days with a license, Cecil's training career over the past decade or so was marked by fewer days at the top table. During this period, owner-breeder Paul Reddam was a loyal and vital mainstay for the barn.

Cecil told the TRC in 2017 that he viewed his uncle Henry's glorious redemption from well-documented personal and professional travails as aspirational.

“He's one of my inspirations–definitely,” Cecil said, at the time. “I think, like we all do, it's the hope that we get through it. You have to think there's some light at the end of the tunnel.”