The racehorse trainer Ian Balding, who has died aged 87, saddled 1,755 winners on the flat, of which 123 were in Group races of the highest class. Yet across his four-decade career there was one horse that stood out above all others – the great Mill Reef, who won the Derby and the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe in 1971.
Like most trainers worth their salt, Balding was prepared to acknowledge his good fortune in coming across such an extraordinary horse. But even though Mill Reef was special from the outset, the colt still had to be expertly managed.
