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Interview: Richard Phillips I'm
the most determined,
dogged bastard, competitive to the point of sad'
 By
Peter Thomas
Courtesy of the Racing Post
YOU won't have seen Richard Phillips on the TV for a while, at least
not with his Rory Bremner head on. He doesn't do that kind of stuff
any more, because he's a serious trainer now. Mind you, not that
many serious trainers have a singing hamster in their office that
does a couple of verses of Kung Fu Fighting when squeezed in the
right place. He's serious all right, and if you argue with him,
he'll point you towards the winners' table in the Racing Post, which
records that he's had 25 winners from just 102 runners this term,
for a pretty serious strike-rate of almost 25 per cent.
If you're after further evidence of his new-found gravitas, look
to the bookcase and you'll find an unthumbed copy of Debrett's Correct
Form (a present from his mother, he claims); but it competes for
shelf space with the autobiography of rubber-faced comic Rowan Atkinson
- so where, exactly, does that leave us in our search for the real
Richard Phillips? Lord Muck of Adlestrop, or just Mr Bean with the
right knife and fork?
Indisputably, there was a time when Phillips was seen by many as
the clown prince of racing - a stiletto-sharp mimic of the game's
major players whose own impersonation of a racehorse trainer was
regarded as, at best, secondary.
Critics would laugh to his face and sneer behind his back. Working
from a succession of small yards with a succession of moderate horses,
he moonlighted as a reluctant entertainer, waiting for the time
when he would no longer have to resort to show business to keep
his show on the road. But there was always a price to pay for his
versatility. He recalls: "It started as a means of subsidising
the business, and inevitably some people thought I was out at a
function somewhere when I should have been training racehorses.
"It got back to me a few times that people wanted to send me
horses but felt that I couldn't be good at two things in life, and
that perhaps I should be doing something else instead of being a
trainer."
Fortunately, 39-year-old Phillips has the kind of confidence, based
on solid ground, that doesn't crumble easily. He has the sharp mind
of his Whitehall civil servant father and the instinctive pedagogic
touch of his schoolteacher mother, and the combination equipped
him well for a vocation which made itself known very early. He says:
"I was born near Epsom racecourse and I saw Lester Piggott
five yards away and the great trainers walking past.
"I was just on the other side of the fence from all that, and
I was very lucky in that I knew right away exactly what I wanted
to do in life - that I would do anything I had to do to become a
racehorse trainer, which included standing up in front of a roomful
of people and mimicking other people to earn pounds 500 to buy a
Magnetopulse machine to use on a horse that was running the next
day. "I never wanted to be a mimic, but you can argue that
in a way it's quite similar to what I'm doing now - it's all about
observation and I'm quite an observant human being."
Ambition and an active mind can take a man a fair way, and they
took Phillips from head boy at his local comprehensive to Graham
Thorner's yard, to Witney College, and to an eight-year stint with
gentleman trainer Henry Candy. But to go the whole way takes a fair
bit more, and when the fledgling trainer set up on his own at Sparsholt,
times was 'ard. They were no easier during his four years at John
Francome's stable in nearby Lambourn, but just when it seemed to
the outside world as though Phillips was stranded on the wrong side
of the broad abyss that separates the haves from the have-nots,
he was presented with his quantum leap.
NOT that succeeding David Nicholson at Jackdaws Castle was a bowl
of cherries. More of a poisoned chalice, some said. Phillips was
a young buck with a reputation, founded on the admirable but modest
achievements of horses like Time Wont Wait, that stood barely knee-high
to that of Nicholson. The snipers took their vantage points in the
Cotswolds and waited for a clear shot at the upstart.
When, after just one season, employer and landlord Colin Smith sold
up to JP McManus, even good friends were telling Phillips that he
might as well pack it in. But his confidence sustained him. He explains:
"People said `poor old you. You're in there for five minutes
and the carpet gets taken out from under you'. But I went in knowing
all the options - Colin is a blunt, straightforward man and he told
me he might sell if the price was right - and I made it work for
me.
"For the first time in my life, I had the resources to do the
job. He gave me money to go and buy six horses, knowing that we'd
need a bit of a kick-start, and among those six were Dark'n Sharp,
Supreme Toss, Yann's and Another General, all of whom are in the
A-team at the yard now.
"Jackdaws has been the trigger for it all, so how could I regret
going there?
"There was a great local team in place at the yard and we made
the most of it, and when I had to leave, I was determined to keep
that together."
Keeping it together was all very well - but where? Even close friends
might not have known it, but Phillips, not for the first time in
his life, wasn't waving, he was drowning. This devout non-swimmer
had come close to a watery grave once when he was pushed into a
swimming pool by Zara Phillips - no relation and probably unaware
of his lack of aquatic accomplishment - and had to be rescued by
his madcap assistant Gordy Clarkson. This time, he came within a
whisker of going under before he was saved by the offer of temporary
refuge at the Hambro family's Cotswold Stud, while he did the spadework
on his dream at the yard he now calls home in the tiny village of
Adlestrop. Phillips remembers: "I don't know if even my best
friends knew, but I had ten days to go and nowhere to take the horses,
so I can't thank the Hambros enough for what they did.
"I knew the potential of Adlestrop but it took us a year to
develop it. Meanwhile, the staff all rallied round and we got tremendous
local support.
"I think a lot of it was down to the underdog factor, but as
it turned out, we still won the biggest race of my career with Dark'n
Sharp at Aintree and a Listed race with Averted View at Brighton."
HE ADDS: "We were like Manchester United being 2-1 down in
injury time - everybody tried that much harder and gritted their
teeth. I knew we had horses who could go on to prove themselves
when we got to a place like this, on a gallop that is the best in
Britain, near enough, and I know we can train any horse as well
as any yard.
"Now we've got to convince the world of that, and thankfully,
at the moment, people seem to believe it.
"When people believe it, the bigger owners arrive and you start
to get the horses who can move from the B team into the A team as
they develop.
"It's like Bill Shankly and the old Liverpool dynasty, with
a constant process of self-renewal and improvement from within,
although I think Gordy and I are more like Clough and Taylor!"
 Bill
Shankly, indeed, but is Phillips now out to convince the world that
training racehorses is a matter of life and death? He says: "Sir
Mark Prescott once said that a happy trainer is a bad trainer, which
may be true, because we've always got so much going round in our
heads, but anyone looking for me to be a Tony Hancock figure - the
tortured comedian - is barking up the wrong tree.
"I'm not a depressive. I'm positive. A leading owner once told
me to pack it in because I'd go bankrupt if I carried on the way
I was going. But I'm the most determined, dogged bastard, competitive
to the point of sad.
"And take Clarkson. By nature, he's the laziest man I've ever
met, but he's got something about him because he wants to be associated
with winning.
"Play sport with him and you'll find out. The two of us play
golf with Richard Johnson and Jodie Mogford and it's hatefully competitive,
we're all picking on each other. The minute anybody makes a mistake,
the others are on to him - and I think it's great!
"I still have the odd tantrum when things go wrong, but my
staff just take the piss and that soon knocks it out of you."
To look at Phillips now, his slowly expanding girth comfortable
in tweed and blazers, you might be fooled into thinking that this
former gadfly has turned into a fully paid-up member of the racing
establishment. So have time and achievement dulled his edge? "I
like class acts, and I don't really mind who they are or where they
come from. I see some people fox-hunting and I can understand why
other people want to shoot them, just the same as I see some of
the nicest people I've ever met fox-hunting," he says.
"I like to think I'm universal, I take the piss out of everybody.
I'm not anti-establishment or anti the upper classes. Put it this
way, I've never seen a house that's too big for me. But if you haven't
got a sense of humour I don't want to know you.
"I guess I'm scheming and manipulative to get on as a trainer,
but I'm also a nice bloke. You've got to give somebody a cup of
tea when they come round, haven't you?
"Somebody came into our box at Cheltenham last year and he
walked up and said `Hello, I'm a freeloader'. And I said `So am
I, have a drink'. And he ended up buying a share in a racehorse.
So everybody's happy!"
And will the old Richard Phillips please do stand-up again?
"When Jackdaws came along, I deliberately cut down on the funny
work. I'm still a mug for charity, but I promised myself I wasn't
going to do any more TV until I had my first Cheltenham Festival
winner. So hopefully, come next March, you might get a tilt of the
head and a quick Henry Cecil."
Three stars out to break Festival ice for the stable
DARK'N SHARP provided Richard Phillips with the biggest win of his
career so far in last year's Red Rum Chase at Aintree, and he has
been talked of as a potential Cheltenham Festival winner this season
- but is he, or any other member of the Adlestrop First XI, capable
of delivering the big pot? Irish bookmakers Cashmans certainly think
so. They make him 7-1 joint-favourite for the Grand Annual Chase,
Chopneyev 4-1 favourite for the Pertemps Hurdle Final, and La Landiere
second favourite at 6-1 for the Cathcart Chase.
Phillips is cautious. He has one language for talking to people
and another for talking to people about his horses - but the optimism
seems to be seeping out. He says: "Successful people always
say they don't believe in luck, and in any profession other than
racehorse training, I'd agree.
"But Dark'n Sharp was
unlucky when he fell at Ascot and not quite right when he was beaten
at Kempton, and I'm hoping he'll come back to his best in the spring.
"My maths head says he wouldn't be good enough to win a Queen
Mother Champion Chase, but I think there's still a good race in
him. Whether it's the Champion or the Grand Annual, we'll have to
wait and see.
"Chopneyev is another who has run up a sequence and leapt up
the weights, but he's thrived and strengthened since we brought
him over from France and his confidence is high.
"You'd want to go to Cheltenham with him if the ground was
soft.
"I never make a decision before I have to, but La Landiere
is more likely than she was previously to go for Saturday's Racing
Post Chase, now that I've seen how well she's come out of her last
outing, the latest in a five-race winning spree.
"We didn't enter her for the Royal & SunAlliance Chase
because we didn't think she'd stay, but the jockeys here are becoming
convinced she will, which makes the three miles at Kempton a realistic
target.
"Perhaps we'll end up in the Cathcart, or even the mares' race
at Uttoxeter just after the Festival.
"She'll tell us nearer the time."
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