Walker On The Up After Return To Roots

It's been a breakthrough year for Ed Walker, who has led something of a peripatetic life in his training career to date but is now firmly settled at Kingsdown Stables in Upper Lambourn.

The move18 months ago was a homecoming of sorts as the 35-year-old grew up close by. “As the crow flies, my family lives a mile away from Andrew Balding's house at Kingsclere, so it's really Andrew's fault I'm in this mess,” says Walker with a smile.

While trainers at all levels have different kinds of pressure as part of their daily life—from finding new owners, recruiting staff, injuries to horses—Walker's current situation can be viewed as anything but a mess.

He and his wife Camilla, who served many sales seasons on the front line with The Castlebridge Consignment and thus has an in-depth knowledge of the industry, welcomed their first child, Matilda, 10 months ago and live on site at Kingsdown, the stunning property owned by breeder Bjorn Nielsen with private gallops and all the facilities required to run a modern-day training business.

His relocation to Lambourn after six years with a training licence in Newmarket not only brings Walker almost back home but also back to where it all started for him in the racing world. Before serving time with trainers Roger Charlton and Luca Cumani, Walker's introduction to the bloodstock industry came at Watership Down Stud, which is now home to his landlord's British-based mares and followers, meaning it is still a regular port of call for the trainer.

“My mum's a great horsewoman with not a great deal of interest in racing. Dad is no horseman at all, but madly passionate about horse racing. And I sort of fell in the middle,” says Walker. “Dad and a few friends bought a couple of really cheap yearlings back in the day when Andrew had one yard at Park House and Ian [Balding] was still training and they just nailed it. They had listed winners, runners-up in sales races, winners in Dubai. It was unbelievable. So I was [at school] at Radley in my early teens and I got completely hooked. Every chance I had to come up on the weekend and watch horses work I took. So that was probably when the bug really kicked in and then I just did a couple of sales seasons up at Watership Down—they're just next door—and I learnt so much from Simon [Marsh] and Terry [Doherty].”

Two years at Beckhampton with Charlton led to a four-year stint farther afield in Newmarket with Cumani before he set up in his own right, initially at St Gatien Stables, in the autumn of 2010. That transpired to be the first of four yards he rented in the town before Kingsdown became available when David Lanigan returned to Newmarket.

“I have absolutely no complaints, although it's been very frustrating at times,” he says. “I feel like we've been kind of knocking on the door without kicking it down. We gradually progressed without taking off, if that makes any sense.”

It is doubtless a frustration in the fiercely competitive world of horseracing to see contemporaries having apparently almost instantaneous success followed by a sudden explosion in the number of horses trained. Such a change so early in a training career can, however, mean that it's harder to sustain the flow of winners, and Walker's progressive profile, less flashy than it may seem than some others, has not gone unnoticed.

Indeed, his first runner, Riggins (Ire) (Cape Cross {Ire}), returned the winner of the listed Hyde S. at Kempton, while another son of Cape Cross, Ruscello (Ire), bought for 20,000gns from Sir Michael Stoute's stable as a 2-year-old, became his first big overseas success when winning the G3 Lexus S. on VRC Derby Day at Flemington. Another benchmark was reached this season when Nielsen's homebred Agrotera (Ire) (Mastercraftsman {Ire}) became the stable's first Royal Ascot winner.

“It's quite funny because when I was looking at all of Bjorn's yearlings in my first year of moving down here, Agrotera was of that crop and she's not pretty. I mean she was a moose really, but as we all know, beauty is as beauty does in this game, and she's got a proper engine,” says Walker.

“Ascot was amazing, and Bjorn won the Gold Cup the day before, which was obviously fantastic but in my nervous state I was kind of thinking, 'Oh God all the luck's gone to Stradivarius'. Then [Agrotera] boiled over a bit in the paddock and she can be quite difficult when legging-up and going out on the track and I thought, 'Oh this is all going dreadfully wrong'. But it went pretty right once the gates opened and that's the main thing.”

He continues, “Bjorn's been unbelievably supportive. He always said he was going to support me when I came down, but I didn't realise how much, and in my first year he had 12 horses right from the word go.”

Along with a selection of Nielsen's homebreds in Walker's string of 80 at Kingsdown can also be found horses owned by Lord and Lady Lloyd Webber, Laurence Bellman, Andrew Black's Chasemore Farm, John Pearce Racing, Lady Rothschild and Kirsten Rausing among others, while his more international client base includes an emphasis on Hong Kong owners such as PK Siu, Dr Johnny Hon, Kangyu International Racing and Robert Ng, as well as Al Shaqab Racing, Sheikh Mohammed Bin Khalifa Al Thani, and the Australian-based OTI Racing.

From Riggins being his sole winner in 2010, having received his licence late that year, Walker's tally of winners has gradually increased, his best year in Newmarket being the 40 winners he sent out in 2014. Since moving to Lambourn, his number of runners has increased and, happily, the winners have kept coming at a decent rate. He's currently just one shy of last year's high of 54 with some fancy entries to see him through the remainder of the Turf season.

The stable stalwart, of whom Walker speaks with understandable fondness, is PK Siu's Stormy Antarctic (GB) (Stormy Atlantic), whose calling card is his consistency. Never out of the first three in five starts as a juvenile, including winning twice and being beaten a head by Johannes Vermeer (Ire) (Galileo {Ire}) in the G1 Criterium International, Stormy Antarctic remains as competitive at five and has also earned plenty of airmiles, recording two Group wins this year in France and Germany, as well as being placed in both the G1 Dallmayr Preis and GI Woodbine Mile on his most recent start in Canada.

“Stormy has kind of saved our bacon every year,” he says. “He's been a flag-bearer and a star. Looking back, he was too highly tried at three. He ran in every big Group 1 there was, having won the Craven so well and then been second-favourite for the Guineas. He got injured in the Guineas and then he bounced back to be second in the Jean Prat, which made us think that he was definitely a Group 1 horse. Bar winning a Group 1, you don't get a better CV than his: he's been second in a Group 1 three times and he's won a Group 2, two Group 3s. And those sorts of horses, even if you just have the one, they're so important to keep the stable's name in lights.”

Among those waiting in the wings to assume the role of stable star could be the smart Frankel (GB) colt Cap Francais (GB), bred by the late John Pearce and raced in his name by his great nephew Edmond Bush. Like Nielsen, Pearce, who died in March 2017 at the age of 98, had a long-held ambition to win the Derby and came closest in 2006 when his homebred Dragon Dancer (GB) (Sadler's Wells) was beaten a short-head by Sir Percy (GB) (Mark Of Esteem {Ire}).

Cap Francais is now the winner of two of his three starts, but another well-bred son of Frankel set to make his debut on Wednesday, and who holds a Derby entry, is Ginistrelli (Ire), out of a half-sister to Fame And Glory (GB) (Montjeu {Ire}), who is owned by Nielsen and Mikael Magnusson's Eastwind Racing. Like the Roger Charlton-trained Atty Persse (GB), Ginistrelli is another Frankel colt named after a trainer, and the omen couldn't be more appropriate for Nielsen as Cavaliere Edoardo Ginistrelli was not only the trainer but also the owner-breeder of the 1908 Oaks and Derby winner Signorinetta.

Before such dreams are considered, however, the soft-ground-loving Stormy Antarctic will bid to bring the curtain down on his trainer's best season yet at QIPCO British Champions Day before perhaps a return to Hong Kong in December. Meanwhile, a fellow globetrotter in the same ownership, the German Group 3 winner Indian Blessing (GB) (Sepoy {Aus}), who was third in the GII Ballston Spa at Saratoga last time out, will take her chance in Group/Grade 1 company on Saturday in either Newmarket's Kingdom of Bahrain Sun Chariot S. or farther afield in Keeneland's First Lady S.

Walker says, “I get such a kick out of travelling. You never stop learning in this game. You go and see how different people train, and you meet different people and you pick up different ideas.”

Happy to travel he may be, but Walker's clearly happy to be settled at home with the promise of bigger and better things to come.