TOM'S JUST CLOV-ING IT IN NEW HOME

Nick Townsend talks to up-and-coming Newmarket trainer Tom Clover

- Nick Townsend

There are around 70 trainers operating in and around the ever-evolving, hugely competitive environment of Newmarket.

In the week that ten-times champion Sir Michael Stoute announced he was on the cusp of retirement at 78, at the conclusion of a 52-year career, it is inevitable that one should consider whether his like will be seen again.

One suspects not. Yet, in this world of numerous upwardly mobile individuals - from ex-jockeys to former assistants of leading trainers, or to their offspring - all jousting for success, if ever a young man appears destined to, at very least, add his name to the list of distinguished residents of the town’s Kremlin House Stables it is a 38-year-old who may not be quite in clover yet, but certainly bears an apposite name.

Tom Clover was not a beneficiary of a family connection, like a number of his contemporaries, but providence has conspired to bring him to this historic yard after meeting and marrying Jackie, the daughter of one of the town’s finest exponents of the trainer’s art, Michael Jarvis, who was based here for 35 years.

Coincidentally, we talk the day before Clover’s Rogue Lightning contests a Group 3 sprint at Longchamp, scene of Jackie’s late father’s 1989 Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe success with Carroll House. In the event, Clover’s charge would go down by two short heads behind the shock winner Pradaro.

“I thought he ran a solid race,” is the trainer’s verdict. “He’s come out of the race well and we’ll either head back for the Prix de l’Abbaye (in which he was fifth last year, but only beaten just over a length) or run in the Rous Stakes at Ascot.”