Much in the same way that atride every great horse is a talented jockey, there is also a horse trainer waiting in the wings who has put many of the puzzle pieces together to get to this place in time. So many factors make up the role of a successful trainer, and they include such areas as having top of the range facilities, crafting horse specific diets, having top medical care on hand, the list goes on. Of course there’s the core of the task at hand too, in the form of training. This is where all the former elements and more come together and align with a meaningful and tailored training structure designed for a horse to excel at what it – hopefully – does best.

This last factor of the ‘nuts and bolts’ of actual training often comes down to having decades of knowledge of the sport  – combined with an instinct and intuition for racing – and that’s something that doesn’t come easy. The start up costs for training a horse can be significant too and the cost of a noteworthy trainer being part of that setup, makes that even more so. The facilities, the experience, the connections, it can all come together to bring the very best out of a talented horse, but it doesn’t necessarily come cheap either, both in terms of cost and perseverance.

In fact, talent is a rather important word and distinction here, because of course a horse trainer can’t very well train a bog standard horse to the highest level. So while said trainer can be very important , factors sush as breeding, natural ability and a dollop of good old fashioned luck can also play a part. There are elements of both luck and skill to almost everything in life, from playing casino games on pikakasinot, to taking part in a sports event, and it’s easy to ignore the nuance of this dynamic when things are, or aren’t, going your way.  It reminds of the football manager equivilent, where good and bad results often seem to put at the feet of the manager, rather than attributing a significant amount to the outcome to those actually kicking the ball. Clearly both, to an extent, are part of a winning dynamic (and a losing one).

In horse racing it’s as much that having a talented top name horse trainer at the helm is a big positive fighting your corner, part of a well oiled machine. It’s not a guarantee of success by any means, but given the option you’d always want the ear and advice of an expert in the field over purely ‘winging it’.