Longserving Mick Channon stable stalwart Lesley White, on duty in Dubai on her latest away trip on behalf of the incorrigible trainer, speaks to Laura King.
UAE: There are many ways to describe Lesley White, Mick Channon’s travelling head person for more than 30 years.
Dedicated, knowledgeable and even formidable all come to mind. Funny? Oh yes. Sit down with her over coffee and you soon release she has that gift of not taking life, or herself, too seriously.
She also won’t give away her age – “too old” is the best we could get. White has worked for Mick Channon for so long even she can’t remember exactly when she started. Ask her about the horses she’s worked with though, and the memory is sharp as a pin.
“The very first winner I travelled was Golden Scissors at Beverley, John Reid rode it, that was a long time ago,” she says, settling on a chair by the pool at Dubai’s international quarantine stables. “That probably wasn’t the first runner I travelled, but he was definitely the first winner.”
One of racing's most enduring partnerships
White has been around horses her whole life, but it was a chance encounter when Channon visited her parents’ stud which led to one of the most enduring partnerships in racing.
She recalls: “As a kid I used to ride out for Bill Wightman and then Mick offered me a job to break all his yearlings so I started with him then, so that was maybe 35, 38 years ago? Well, it was after I worked for an oil company, laying cables for a year.”
That’s White, full of surprises and now firmly into her stride. Sitting in the Dubai sun, surrounded by riders and grooms from Turkey, Ireland, the UK and France, she’s also very much in her world.
Channon has sent horses to all bar two Dubai Carnivals and freely admits that it’s White who does the training while they’re here. The endeavour has paid off too, with successes including Halicarnassus in 2010 to Opal Tiara and Certain Lad more recently. This year’s stint, with five-year-old Dalanijujo, was less fruitful, the mare finishing unplaced in both runs. White, though, is still content with a job well done.
‘Quite hard on myself, not on the horses’
“I think I’m quite hard on myself, not the horses,” says the winner of the 2015 Dedication to Racing Award at the Godolphin Stud and Stable Staff Awards. “God forbid you ever miss a nick or something. It’s human to err, but it’s the stupid little things that annoy me – not the big things you can’t do anything about. Sometimes they’re just not good enough, and that’s that.”
Channon’s forward-thinking approach to travel has sent White around the world, an experience she’s relished. “UAE, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, America, France, Germany …” she lists before settling on one particular highlight.
“We were walking the track in Japan [before Halicarnassus ran in the Japan Cup in 2007] and the sun was setting right on the top of Mount Fuji and that was one of the most fantastic things I’ve ever seen. He went to stud in Turkey, old Hali.”
Having taken her to the Far East, as well as to Italy, Turkey, four Dubai Carnivals, Halicarnassus must surely be one of her favourites?
“No, he used to buck like hell!” She laughs heartily. “You’d like to say your favourites are the good horses, but that’s not necessarily right.
“We had a little filly, she was no bigger than 14.2hh. We used to call her ‘Tiny’, although she was called Misdemeanours Girl. She won the big sprint on Hong Kong day at Sandown and I was up at Haydock. I knew when I got back – and this is long before the days of mobile phones – that she’d won just by her demeanour over the door. She was a tiny little thing, but she tried so hard and I thought ‘bless her, she deserved that.’”
So what does she enjoy most about travelling horses? A life which isn’t without its physical exertion, with days off being rare.
“Being away from the boss!”, she quips, “and it’s probably likewise. Out of sight, out of mind. I think that’s probably why we get on so well, because we don’t see each other very often. No … I just enjoy it; I think it’s nice to go away with nice horses and obviously the weather is a little bit better than it is at home. Wherever you go, there’s usually a good bunch of people. You might not know a soul and everyone gets on, irrespective of the language barrier.”
There’s no language barrier with fellow Brit Channon, but the ex-England International footballer is famous for his ‘bollockings’, which have sent many a jockey running for cover over the years.
‘We’ve all mellowed with age’
“[Mick] is grand. He’s mellowed a lot, but that’s called age, we’ve all mellowed with age,” says the most dedicated Channon employee. “He doesn’t hold grudges which is a real good thing. If you do anything wrong, you’ll be called out, but two minutes later he’ll have forgotten all about it.”
Several G1 winners have passed through the yard during White’s time, with Irish 1,000 Guineas winner Samitar just one of a series of top fillies with whom Channon has excelled, a list that also includes unbeaten juvenile Queen’s Logic.
“Queen’s Logic obviously stuck out,” she says. “I thought she was an exceptional filly. She got a bruise in her foot before the Guineas so she didn’t run and that was her finished. [Owner] Jaber [Abdullah] was a very lucky man … Flashy Wings, Zain … a very lucky man.”
White also counts herself as one of the lucky ones, in a career she loves, although she stopped riding out two years ago. “I had enough,” she says. “I don’t miss riding the yearlings, that’s for sure, and it’s funny, you see far more on the ground than you ever do from on top.”
‘You can’t be scared of anything’
Despite having ridden plenty of top horses during her time, she never wanted to pursue a career as a jockey. “Couldn’t be less interested,” she says emphatically. “I’m very ambitious and unless I was good enough to win, there’s no point me doing it – I don’t want to be second or third.”
With White, it’s all about the horses, and not just the ones she’s directly responsible for. She’s a helping hand for plenty of others in Dubai’s international stables, from feeding to coaxing tricky ones onto the track.
“You can’t be scared of anything in this job,” she says, before admitting to a hatred of cats. “If you’re scared then it’s a waste of time being anywhere near a horse. You’ve got to trust yourself to trust them. If you know you’ve got the ability to do it, you’ll do it.
“Same as if you want to be a Formula 1 driver – if you don’t have the ability to drive a Ford Escort then you’re not going to be a Formula 1 driver. You’ve got to know your own strengths and limitations.”
With her time in Dubai for 2022 drawing to a close, does she have any plans to put away her passport and lead an easier life? The question brings another unequivocal response.
“Retire? No. I’m very fortunate. I don’t have to work seven days a week if I don’t want to. Obviously I go in when the boss needs me. He was on holiday for two or three weeks, so I went in and ran the yard and that was fine. No, I could never retire full stop. Never. Ever.”
What is it she loves so much? “Not the 9.30 at Wolverhampton on a Saturday night in February,” she grins. “But I enjoy taking little horses racing and seeing them win. It’s irrelevant to me what they win – I like seeing horses that try go and win and that gives more pleasure to me than anything. Sounds strange, but it does.”
When she’s not looking after her horses – or someone else’s - White is a keen reader of crime novels and wishes she’d studied harder at school and become a forensic scientist. That though, seems to be her only regret and she enjoys her own company. “You can’t argue with anyone then, can you?” she deadpans.
Not even the boss. Because, after all, he’s usually thousands of miles away.
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