Clive Brittain to Retire

[PNkt]

Something in the water this week evidently!

• Brittain to retire from training at end of season
  By Jon Lees 12:00PM 3 SEP 2015
  CLIVE BRITTAIN, a six-time British Classic winner and international pioneer is planning to retire from training at the end of the season.
  
  Brittain, who is 81 and has held a licence since 1972, is one of Newmarket's longest-serving and most decorated trainers, having risen from the role of stable lad to become one of the most accomplished and forward-thinking trainers of his era.
  
  "At the end of the season I'm planning to retire," he said. "I've had a good innings and enjoyed nearly all of it. It has been a fantastic life and lifestyle, but it has come to the time where I want to retire.
  
  "It had to come sometime and I thought it was only fair to let my very good owners Saeed Manana, Sheikh Juma and Sheikh Rashid [Dalmook Al Maktoum] and others know that I wasn't going to take yearlings in this year. It was only fair to inform them so that they can make other arrangements with trainers."
  
  Decades of success
  
  Brittain was never short of belief in his own horses, an attribute evident in his first Classic success, when Julio Mariner won the 1978 St Leger at odds of 28-1. Others followed when Pebbles took the 1,000 Guineas in 1984. During a golden period in the nineties he added the 2,000 Guineas with Mystiko in 1991, Oaks and St Leger with User Friendly in 1992, and took a second 1,000 Guineas with Sayyedati in 1993.
  
  Pebbles was to become a world champion and help secure international renown for Brittain, who became the first British trainer to win a Breeders' Cup race when she captured the Turf in 1995. A year later he made a similar breakthrough in the far east when Jupiter Island's triumph in the Japan Cup was also a first for a British stable.
  
  There was, however, no better example of his adventurous spirit than his tilt at the 1986 Kentucky Derby in which in finishing second with Bold Arrangement he came nearer than any other from his shores to winning the US Classic.
  
  The first of multiple Group successes were gained with Averof (1974) and Radetzky (1976) in the St James's Palace Stakes at Royal Ascot, where he has enjoyed 18 victories in total, many celebrated with a trademark jig.
  
  
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  Clive Brittain does a victory jig after winning the Moyglare with Rizeena
  
  PICTURE: Patrick McCann (racingpost.com/photos)
  He won Classics in Ireland and Italy, and in Hong Kong recorded back-to-back wins in the Vase with Luso in 1996 and 1997, while another horse with a special place in his affections is the versatile Warrsan, who won the Coronation Cup in 2003 and 2004, and amassed more than £1.6 million in prize-money.
  
  Brittain excelled with fillies. Pebbles, who also won the Coral-Eclipse and Champion Stakes, began a career narrative that continued through to Rizeena, who claimed the trainer's last Group 1 success in the 2014 Coronation Stakes.
  
  He said: "There was Pebbles, User Friendly, Sayyedati, Crimplene, and of course Rizeena to finish my career off. She has been unlucky not to have won more, but she put me back on the Group 1-winning mark again."
  
  Brittain, who started out with a three-year lease on Pegasus Stables, has trained at Carlburg with wife Maureen since 1975. Brittain, who received the George Ennor Trophy for Outstanding Achievement at the 2014 Horserace Writers' & Photographers' Association Derby Awards, plans to put his yard up for sale, and broke the news to his 26 staff on Thursday morning.
  

 

[Ron]

Trainer of my favourite filly of all time, Pebbles, here is a trainer who never dodged anything. Always cheerful and optimistic, I didn't realise he was that age. Enjoy a long, happy and well earned retirement

 

[NassauBoard]

Proper trainer and hope he enjoys retirement. His big winners were before my time, but the record book tells the story.

 

[Bustino74]

Also led up Crepello.
Fantastic career.

 

[PNkt]

A timely article in today's Racing Post:

Racing’s iceberg sinks lower as Toller calls time
By Steve Dennis 1:30PM 3 SEP 2015
ONE at a time, one at a time. Monday may have been a languid, languorous bank holiday - no such thing in racing, of course, when it's always business as usual - but it was also a day for big decisions, a bumper unburdening of secrets.

First Hurricane Fly was retired, then Hayley Turner announced her decision to quit the saddle, and somewhere in the middle James Toller indicated he would not be renewing his training licence. Some days there is just too much news to give it all its rightful presence; something has to give.

It was perhaps a little reminiscent of a November evening in 1963 when newspaper editors were made aware that Aldous Huxley, writer of Brave New World, had died. Obituarists were alerted, front pages prepared. Within the hour, news broke that CS Lewis, the creator of Narnia, had also joined the Upstairs Club. Pages were torn up and started again, decisions were made about who would take greatest prominence. Not long after that, the phone rang. Developments at Dealey Plaza - JFK, blown away. There's your newspaper; dump Huxley and Lewis on page 54 in ‘other news'.

So if Turner is the charismatic president with the unofficial Monroe doctrine and Hurricane Fly the fantasy novelist specialising in talking lions, does that make Toller the psychedelic visionary with poor vision? You decide . . .

The three big stories were easy to separate, assimilate. Hurricane Fly was a retirement waiting to happen, if not this year then the next, a great horse nearing the end of a glittering career. It happens all the time. Turner was more of a surprise, but the circumstances were upbeat, a young woman changing direction at the right time in her life. That, too, happens all the time. Toller was the raised eyebrow, the jolt of revelation, the tale of the unexpected. Yet that was the one that didn't make the front page.

In racing, as in sport, as in life, the big names receive the most coverage. Frankie Dettori and American Pharoah, Chelsea and Manchester United, David Cameron and Taylor Swift. A majority of people have an interest in the big names, whether they're actually being interesting or not, so because they ‘sell' they're the ones we see most of. Quite often there's little substance to the ‘story', but the topic itself is sufficient.

Small-time trainer gives up job - that doesn't sell. That's dull. Quick, put something else on the front page. Yet that's the story that tells us something important, that's the story that reflects the realities of the world rather than the echoingly empty rhetoric of the splash headline. Small trainer gives up job is the sign of the times and it concerns you and me far more than whether one brown horse might one day run around a field with another brown horse.

Toller was never a major trainer, never one of the elite, but there were many big days with the likes of Irish Guineas winner Bachelor Duke and crack sprinter Compton Place. There were also, clearly, very many small days with nothing whatsoever to show for all the hard work. It is superficial to consider that Toller led a life of quiet desperation, soul-searching his way from one end of the month to the other, but it is precisely that which led him to the end of the road.

Struggling beneath the waterline

How many others like Toller are there, self-doubt gnawing at them as their stable strength dwindles, worry mounting as another owner leaves the sport, their accountant sucking his teeth in agitation and stabbing a finger at the bottom line? Plenty. Toller's words need no parsing to maximise their impact.

"Quite a lot of other people are finding it difficult, and if you're a small trainer it's probably harder now than it ever was," he said. "I can't see much prospect of things improving given the economic climate in racing."

Those are words between which there is no room for manoeuvre, no space to spin a brighter outlook. It's said that racing is a pyramid, but it's more like an iceberg. Ten per cent of it is visible, beautiful, a mighty show of strength. The other nine-tenths are below the waterline, out of sight and out of mind, presumed to exist only because otherwise the sunlight would not be able to play so irresistibly over the many facets of the majestic ten per cent that stays afloat.

How many other trainers, jockeys, owners read Toller's tale and thought, ‘Beat me to it'? This is the reality of racing, that the vast majority of its participants are struggling to remain its participants, quietly, anonymously, desperately, and very often that struggle becomes too much to sustain. But that isn't news, is it, not in either sense of the word.

Instead, the news is Gleneagles and Victoria Pendleton, Richard Johnson and Treve, bread and circuses. Meanwhile, somewhere in the small print someone's life's work is brought to a bitter end. And the iceberg sinks a little lower in the water.

 

[SaveTheHumans]

Fair play for staying involved up until 81 anyway, that's an achievement in itself and no one can complain that he doesn't deserve a bit of time off for a bit of R and R!

 

[PNkt]

Very moving piece giving more detail into why Clive is retiring.

 

[Ron]

Seems like some of the article is missing. Maybe just me, I'll try again later

 

[PNkt]

I've heard a few things today on Clive's retirement. Apparently he's unwell himself, though no one seems to know for sure what is wrong. Allegedly Philip Robinson was helping to train the horses until earlier this year when he and Clive had a falling out. Things have been going downhill in the yard since then.