Our Epsom series continues as Steve Dennis talks to the understated Newmarket trainer seeking a first British Classic success with only his second Derby runner – 33 years after the first
We are taught to look forward and not back, to not dwell on the past but embrace the future. It’s a stock mantra, the pragmatic approach, yet who among us can resist turning away from such advice, our heads turned by the sweet, spellbinding Rickenbacker jangle of nostalgia?
Wise as we are, as we should be, we succumb to the urge. Thirty-three years ago – 33 years! – trainer James Fanshawe ran a horse called Environment Friend in the Derby for owner Bill Gredley.
Environment Friend was well-fancied but finished 11th, and in the half-life since that day Fanshawe and Gredley have gone their separate ways to find success.
Now they’re putting the band back together with another Derby horse, his name an echo of the past, like the lyrics of an old song suddenly, mysteriously recalled almost word for word. Ambiente Friendly is second-favourite for the Derby and he is in Fanshawe’s yard for just one reason.
“Nostalgia,” says Fanshawe. “My wife Jacko had cooked lots of dinners for Bill Gredley, who said he’d support me with a horse when I first took out a licence – and he did, sending me Environment Friend.
“Bill hasn’t had horses with me for 20-odd years, but to celebrate his 90th birthday last April he went to the breeze-up sales and bought nine horses. He sent four of them to me and one was Ambiente Friendly. When I asked him why he’d sent them to me, he told me it was for nostalgic reasons.”
So Fanshawe is back on the Derby trail with what is astonishingly his first runner in the premier Classic, the world’s greatest Flat race, since that overcast, unsummery day back in 1991 when Environment Friend went up in a puff of grey smoke behind the brilliant winner Generous.
“Do the two have anything in common? Similar physique, I’d say, both athletic types, not too heavy-topped,” says Fanshawe.
A bit of a disaster
“I don’t know what happened to Environment Friend, he had trained really well but just never turned up at Epsom. A bit of a disaster.
“The main issue with Ambiente Friendly was to get him to relax, to switch him off,” he goes on. “My job at first was not to find out how good he was, but to give him a chance at being good.
“Bill was hopeful that we could get him to stay, and thankfully over the winter his whole demeanour changed, he grew up, simple as that. He became much more relaxed about everything and that was reflected in his performance.”
Before Ambiente Friendly went to Lingfield for the Derby Trial, he was a 100-1 shot for Epsom. When he went back home to Newmarket he was a 10-1 chance (and is now half those odds), having put his rivals to the sword with a hugely impressive victory, drawing right away to score by 4½ lengths in near track-record time. Those with long memories recalled Environment Friend’s five-length victory in his own Derby prep, glanced wistfully back at their younger selves even as they focused on the future.
“He went round Lingfield really nicely,” says Fanshawe, citing that track’s resemblance to Epsom, with its downhill run and sharp left-hand home turn. “He gave himself a chance to stay by being so much more relaxed. Up until then he always wore a hood in his races, but he was so chilled at home I took it off – and he’s still learning.
“The Derby is a tough prospect for any horse, and it can come too early for some. Ambiente Friendly has had plenty of practice, though, he went through the breeze-ups and has had a properly conventional preparation for the race.
“Andrew Sansome rides him out every day and has been a vital factor in his preparation and his change of character. Perhaps ten furlongs might be his ideal trip [Ambiente Friendly’s sire is dual 2,000 Guineas winner Gleneagles] but plenty of horses with a similar profile have won Derbys before.”
Trainers with a similar profile to Fanshawe – solid, consistent, unflashy, unheralded – have found only slim pickings in the Derby in recent years, the race becoming the preserve of the big beasts O’Brien, Appleby, Gosden and Stoute. Fanshawe learned his craft with the latter, was on the team when Shahrastani had his Derby-day glory in 1986, and given his keen sense of history and an appreciation of its weight is delighted to have a bona fide Derby contender again.
Last-minute ambush
He would, though, consider ‘delighted’ as the wrong way to put it. Fanshawe is a thoughtful, precise interviewee, selects his words with the patience and care of a child making its pocket-money stretch at the sweetshop, which is one of the reasons he doesn’t like the last-minute ambush of the parade-ring pundit’s cross-examination.
There is a stretch of dead air while he considers whether he should term the Derby build-up ‘exciting’, before eschewing that word’s potential superficiality and settling for the build-up being an enjoyable challenge.
Such attention to detail is characteristic of the slightly old-school Fanshawe, although he might yet reckon ‘old-school’ as too dusty a description given his well-publicised affinity for the distinctly unjangly nu-metal rockers Limp Bizkit, and there are other words he’d prefer not to use too.
“I was listening to the radio in the car coming back from Lingfield, and I heard myself being described as ‘the veteran trainer’,” he says. “I didn’t like that much.”
Fanshawe is 62, wonders aloud that if he’s considered a veteran, what does that make the remarkable Wayne Lukas, still winning Preaknesses at the age of 88?
It’s a fair point, but Fanshawe started young – he took out his licence in 1990, with Environment Friend part of his first ‘crop’. Perhaps familiarity has bred the attempt to pigeonhole him as an old-timer.
During his long tenure there have been more than 1,300 winners of every stripe, from the multiple G1-winning filly Soviet Song, his best horse, to Breeders’ Cup Filly & Mare Turf winner Audarya, from Royal Ascot G1 sprint stars The Tin Man and Society Rock to the occasional off-road foray into the jumping arena with Champion Hurdle winners Royal Gait and Hors La Loi.
The only thing missing from his roll of honour is a British Classic winner, though Arctic Owl won an Irish St Leger. It would be appropriate if it arrived in the Derby, given that Fanshawe trains at the Pegasus House stables built by the great jockey Fred Archer, who rode five Derby winners in ten years between 1877 and 1886.
Archer’s Mixture
The tortured, half-starved Archer (right) – he was tall for a jockey, and to make weight was reduced to the purgatory of half an orange and a mouthful of champagne a day, plus the purgative of his own vicious Archer’s Mixture – shot himself in the house that once stood on the site.
Myth and superstition being what it is, many have reported seeing Archer’s ghost roaming the grounds. Fanshawe never has, but …
“One night the lads in the staff hostel got hold of a ouija board and decided to dial up Fred’s ghost,” he says. “We had a runner the next day and they asked him if it was going to win, and the answer came back from the other side that yes, the horse would win. And it did.”
Archer’s tipping prowess from beyond the veil should be tempered with the fact that the horse in question was 6-4 favourite, but apparently at another seance Archer provided the location of the burial place of the most recent Derby winner to be trained at Pegasus House, the 1919 hero Grand Parade. This was news to everyone, including Fanshawe, who found the grave in a state of neglect and had it restored as befitting the status of its occupant.
There is no word on whether Archer has been consulted about the prospects of Ambiente Friendly in the big one. Fanshawe prefers not to get ahead of himself in this regard, not being a pessimist as such but keenly aware of the capacity for things to go wrong. However, should it come to pass, there would be few trainers as appreciative of the race’s history and his place within it.
“It is the most important Classic we have, without a doubt,” he says. “It’s great to be going there with a live chance. I just hope I haven’t been too much of a pain in the arse to the staff, including Jacko and my son and assistant Tom.
“I liken the Derby build-up to having made it as far as the base camp at Mount Everest, and now we’re gazing up at the summit. People in the town have been wishing us well as the Derby approaches, and it’s very exciting for the whole yard.”
Threshold of history
Yes, he did use the word ‘exciting’ that time. He should forgive himself that verbal slip given his position at the threshold of history, one foot either side, simultaneously looking back with amusement – “It would make Fred Archer very proud, I’m sure, if we won a Derby” – and forward with optimism, recognising the fresh ideas and energetic approach of his son Tom that should ensure the continued prominence of the Fanshawe name in the years to come.
And of the present? There are a few changes in personnel to note, as there often are when the band comes back together. The Gredley Family, with Bill and his son Tim to the fore, is the owner of record now, and jockey Rab Havlin – a hugely successful session musician getting a rare moment in the limelight, if we want to draw out the analogy – has been drafted in for the ride on Ambiente Friendly, replacing Callum Shepherd, the winning rider at Lingfield.
Fanshawe, though, is still centre stage. “I’m enjoying it,” he says, after another period of deliberation, trying out this word and that before alighting on the exact one to illustrate his Derby emotions. “Win or lose, I’m going to make sure I enjoy it.”
Thirty-three years have been and gone, and the chance may not come again. Fanshawe turns his head towards the nostalgia horse, a song in his heart.
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