Andrew Balding

This year’s 2000 Guineas-winning trainer talks to Catherine Austen about his long-awaited second Classic victory, training for The Queen and the team effort behind his Kingsclere operation

- Catherine Austen

RACING lends itself to dynasties; the same surnames are found repeated in generational gaps throughout its history. That comes with advantages, of course – knowledge is inherent, networks are pre-established and often facilities are inherited. It also comes with heavier loads, however; expectations are high, while successes are perhaps taken for granted and failures more public.

In the build-up to the 2020 Derby, there was barely a mention of favourite Kameko and his trainer Andrew Balding that didn’t include a reference to Andrew’s father Ian’s victory in the race with Mill Reef in 1971, 18 months before Andrew was born. That great horse’s statue stands proudly at the heart of the Baldings’ training establishment at Kingsclere, Berkshire, in the yard that bears his name.

“The problem with the Derby is that you get very few goes at it, and it is incredibly hard to find a horse that is a genuine candidate,” says Andrew. “It could be another five years, it could be another 10, it could be never.”

We are talking two days after the Derby. Kameko finished fourth behind Serpentine in a “funny, muddled” race, and Andrew can’t keep the flat tone of dashed hopes from his voice.

“I can’t deny we are disappointed. A true gallop where he could get some cover and work his way into the race would have suited him much better,” he says.

THE immediacy and fast-flowing nature of racing, particularly in this headlong, abbreviated season, means that we have almost forgotten that Kameko won the 2000 Guineas just a month earlier. It was a second, long-awaited Classic for Andrew; he took the Oaks with Casual Look in 2003, just months after taking over at Kingsclere from his father.