Heavy going for Bailey

THERE was a song in the charts a year or so ago by an anarchist group, topically enough, called Chumbawumba. Not a very good song, with a chorus every bit as irritating as it was catchy. "I get knocked down, but I get up again you're never gonna (sic) beat me down," shouts the singer defiantly, four times in each refrain.

Clearly, it wasn't written in honour of Alan Bailey, but it should have been.

In the 20 years he has been training racehorses, 60-year-old Bailey, a Lancashire lad from the Rossendale valley and now in charge of 40 horses at Tarporley, Cheshire, has remained the eternal optimist despite his trials.

Never mind slings and arrows. Fortune could stage a May Day parade with the arms it has attacked Bailey with down the years. Obdurate and savage, it has struck him with a brutality as would convince most to give up the unequal struggle. Each time he has hauled himself up, dusted down and raised his fists for more.

This week, at Chester, is the time when Bailey, whose strike rate at the track is the envy of all trainers bar Barry Hills, traditionally manages to mark his adversary with a jab and upper cut of his own.

The colt First Truth is his most fancied runner. "I think he'll win the Cheshire Regiment Handicap on Wednesday," says the trainer, whose Agrippina became his first Classic runner when finishing thirteenth in the Sagitta 1,000 Guineas yesterday.

Bailey, who learned much about racehorses and probably more about laughter with Peter Walwyn, took out a licence in 1980, aged 40, to run the Wroughton House yard in Newmarket, and moved to the town's Induna Stables five years later.

From there he trained his first Chester Cup winner, 33-1 shot Old Hubert, in 1988.

That horse ran in the colours of Terry Ramsden, Bailey's principal owner.

Ramsden, with hair beyond his shoulders and working-class north London roots, epitomised the Thatcher era.

Leaving school to become a city firm dogsbody at 16, he rose to make millions with his company Glen International and was a major turf player. But it didn't last. The company collapsed and a disgraced Ramsden was sentenced to 21 months' imprisonment for concealing assets from bankruptcy officials.

"Things went wrong for me in Newmarket when Terry Ramsden went under," recalled Bailey. "I trained 46 horses for Terry, and that was me in trouble.

"I lost the yard and everything."

That blow was only a sighter, the two that followed making the loss of a livelihood look insignificant.

"That was my worse year ever, 1991. Sharron Murgatroyd broke her back at Bangor. We'd a long association, Sharron and I, and she was like a daughter to me. She was a tremendous girl.

"Then, on 5 December that year, my daughter Marilyn got killed in a motor accident.

"I came up here in March 1992. I wasn't on the floor then, I was six foot under. I was dead and buried - they only needed to chuck the topsoil in and that was me out of it."

What nobody could take away was Bailey's prowess at training horses and knowing the time to put money down. Silence In Court, his 1998 Chester Cup winner, provides evidence of both: limited to one run in the previous three years, he landed a crushing gamble in the race, one of the most competitive handicaps in the calendar, on his seasonal reappearance.

That win had stamped Bailey's long way back from the cliff edge, but it turned out fate was only taking a breather between rounds.

In June that year, Silence In Court died of colic. The following month Bailey almost went the same way, shooting himself in the head in an accident with a gun. Gossips, who obviously had never met the man, whispered it to be a suicide attempt.

The trainer, who now numbers Michael Tabor among his owners - he has the colt Hypothesis with Bailey - didn't think himself unlucky.

He thanked his lucky stars he wasn't cleaning a bigger gun.

"It's a good job it was a 2.2 and not a 12-bore or anything - that would have blown my head off - but the 2.2 just shot straight up the side of my face. The bullet left a scar, but I was never good- looking anyhow, so it hasn't done much damage!"

A clearout followed a disappointing, 13-winner campaign in 1999. Bailey, who every morning is woken by the screeching of his 120 bantams, is confident this year's class is brighter.

"I have some nice horses about this year. I have had three winners, but I haven't had a lot of runners this year. I don't set a target, I just want to get as many as I can. I think if you start setting targets you get depressed if you are not reaching them.

"Sometimes you think, I'd love to meet the person who talked me into going into racing - I'd kick them right in the whatsits. Sometimes it's the most disheartening job in the world.

"But then it's a great game. It can be a great job - what else could you do?"

Copyright 2000
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