Speaking exclusively with BOYLE Sports, Racing trainer George Baker has revealed that he is set to welcome new horses into his yard, owned by legendary former Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson.
George speaks honestly about the role luck plays in racing, and with Ryder Cup season coming, he makes the apt analogy of it being akin to a golfer’s putt that lips out.
The Epsom-based trainer, who has now set up a satellite yard in Bahrain, gives his thoughts on the region's racing ambitions and how they can carve out their unique niche.
Sir Alex Ferguson Will Soon Have Horses Again
Sir Alex was very heavily involved with us right from the beginning, which was fantastic. He was a great supporter of ours. He hasn't got a horse in training with us at the moment, which we are about to address.
He will be back on board very soon. When we started many years back, he was one of the first people who supported us, and people saw him having horses with us, which was a great filip for us right at the beginning.
He Absolutely Loves Racing
He absolutely loves his racing. He came on board with us probably about 2011-12, when he was still a manager at Man United. And that was fascinating for us. It gave us the opportunity to go and spend time with him and have some fabulous European nights at Old Trafford, and then sitting in his little room under the stands with a bottle of something decent and hearing all the tales and then the next morning going out to Carrington was absolutely fascinating.
One of the most amazing things that struck me when we were there was how brilliant he was at delegating. You always sort of imagined that he would be an incredibly busy man, but then going to Carrington in the mornings, and we'd sit in his office and after chattering away for half an hour or so, I’d go, ‘Alex, we must go. We've taken up far too much of your time!’
And he'd go, ‘No, no, don't go. Don't go because everybody's doing everything they should. Everything's sorted.’ He said to me If you can delegate, it means you're surrounded by the right people. And he was absolutely superb at that.
And the other thing he taught me right at the beginning was you've got to listen to everybody, however mad, wacky or offbeat or offbeat somebody's idea might appear, you've just got to listen to everybody because if you listen to someone and 99 % of it goes over your head and means nothing. But if you can take 1% out of a conversation, you might be able to adapt it to your business.’
And I think that was one of the reasons for his longevity as a manager. He never ever went, ‘Wow, I've sorted it out, I know how to do it.’ He always reacted and adapted, and looked for the edge and the angle.
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Luck Is Key!
The key thing is definitely surrounding yourself with the right people. You see a lot of people in all walks of life when you're setting up a business, and I certainly fell into the trap of wanting to do everything. You want to be on top of everything, and you imagine that the whole business is going to fall to pieces without you running every single facet of it. And of course, it is completely the reverse.
Actually, if you can delegate and have the right people around you, and I suppose reporting to you about the various aspects of the business, and you could be sitting there on the bridge running the show, that means you've got the right people around you.In our game, as in football, I'm sure you get a lot of people who come to you and they're suggesting a different methodology or different things to do on the gallops.
Some of them are completely wild and might make no sense at all, but you should hear people out. That is the other thing he taught me: a degree of politeness whereby you listen to people, you hear people out, and if you can take something from what they tell you, then so much the better.
Again, as with all sports, one of the biggest commodities is luck. You can win or lose a horse race by the width of a strip of paper. And no one asks you at the end of the year how many seconds you've had. It's all about winning. But it's the same for the golfer who's putt lips out.
Not Competing With Dubai
It was. It came to us, really. I got a call about five years ago. I was out on the gallops, and someone rang me up and said they were calling from the office of Sheikh Salman bin Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, in Bahrain, and I thought, rather like the first time when Sir Alex rang me, I thought it was a friend trying to take the mickey. It turned out that it was his office, and they explained what they were trying to do, and my wife and I headed over there and were immediately impressed by their enthusiasm, which was just tangible from the word go.
They're not trying to emulate Dubai or replicate Dubai. They just want to be part of what is becoming a sort of Middle East swing for the racing season through the winter. They've more than done that. The International Trophy, their main race, remains a Group 2, and all being well, it'll be a Group 1 next year, which is remarkable in the space of five years. We were just so impressed by the facilities and the ambition of the people involved.
It’s fantastic for our owners. They incentivise them; the Bahrain Turf Club fly the horses out for the Turf Series, which runs from just before Christmas to the week before Cheltenham, at their cost. They give our owners $10,000 to spend in the Kingdom when they are over there, and you are competing in $80-$100,000 races. Would you rather be at Wolverhampton, Southwell or Lingfield in January, or in Bahrain with a bit of sun on your back and running around for decent prize money.
We love it because we've had plenty of winners there. Plenty of other trainers have gone out there and found that it hasn't suited them or their horses, but we are very much committed, and a lot of the upcoming sales will revolve around us freshening up the team to go there this winter. Five years ago, we took two horses to Bahrain, and then last year we had five; the previous year we had seven. I'd love to have sort of six, seven, eight again this year. We've got a few already on the team who will be going back over there.
We've got a lot of owner interest, and we love it. It’s so competitive here that it's another string to our bow, that means we can provide competitive sport for our owners on an international stage.
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