Few trainers do it

successfully.

Few trainers produce one son good enough to become champion flat jockey at 23, another who rides 50 winners a year for his father and before him, for Martin Pipe.

Gary Moore is one such trainer. Long based at Woodingdean outside Brighton, he has now bought Charles Cyzer’s yard near Horsham, which he will expand and eventually be based from.

Moore has 100 horses, which is too great a number for Woodingdean, so extra room was needed and when Cyzer decided to call a halt to a 20-year career as a private trainer, Moore took his opportunity.

He had said previously that while he would like to train from Lambourn or Newmarket, he was concerned he wouldn’t have the facilities he enjoyed at Brighton, where he could turn horses out on the downs or take them to the beach.

His rule of thumb is to have happy horses, but who work for their living.

A bit of mud on them is a good thing.

Venetia Williams is another trainer for whom this is an obviously-successful formula.

His is not a training yard that sports newly-mown stripes on lawns and reeks of fresh paint.

His presence in the yard is as leader, yes, but also jack-of-all-trades.

Not for him the immaculate military inspection routine of Sir Mark Prescott.

The success of his two jockey sons is no great surprise.

Gary’s father Charlie was a comic and used-car salesman who began training racehorses by accident rather than design, and Gary himself was a fearless rider over fences with 150 winners to his name.

He walks with the gait of one who has known a fall or two and the odd kick.

It was hardly surprising both boys took to it.

Ryan, the champion jockey, has the miserable air of an AP McCoy about him, except when he has just ridden a winner.

Any length of time without a winner results in what Richard Hannon once called ‘suicide watch’. He is a driven man and likely to become our next ‘great’ flat jockey.

Of current riders, only Fallon and Kinane deserve the accolade.

Jamie Moore, having learned his trade at home, became second jockey for Martin Pipe and rode plenty of winners for him before returning to his father’s growing and successful string. He is talented and consistent.

So Gary Moore is going to Lower Beeding, and he’s going places.

You’ll be as likely to see him at Cheltenham as at Goodwood, and you should treat his record in handicaps over both flat and jumps with respect.

He’s a proper old-fashioned horse handler, and certainly the best dual-code trainer in Sussex.

Wish him well at his new yard up the road.