“She is the best mare in the world, at least for the moment,” Sir Mark Prescott says as he counts down the hours until he discovers whether, as British racing’s longest-serving trainer at the age of 74, his horse Alpinista will win the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe at Longchamp in Paris on Sunday afternoon. The Arc is Europe’s richest horse race and Prescott, the most interesting man in racing, has a real chance of capping his career of 53 years by training the winner.
Then, in his wry way, he adds a cautionary reminder about Alpinista’s outstanding form. “But that could disappear like mercury. I’ve had some terrible trips to France where you’re hermetically sealed with the owner from eight in the morning to eight at night. People sharing your plane on the flight back have had the winner, so they’re drunk. Yours has run appallingly and the owner punctuates long silences by saying: ‘Just how much did you say it cost to get this thing here?’ I’ve had a few Dunkirks in my time.”
This time Prescott is training the second favourite and Alpinista has won her last seven races, five of which were Group Ones. But he has so many other interests, from bullfighting and boxing to film noir and theatre, that even the Arc cannot stop him filling our two hours together with rich and varied conversation.
“It’s my own fault,” he says at his beautiful yard in Newmarket. “I’ve only had 50 [horse] boxes and never wanted more. I remember turning down 60 yearlings once so I can’t complain. I’ve had a lovely time and I don’t want to be rushing all over the place. Every trainer reaches a point where, if they’re going to be successful, they could say: ‘I’ve got to become champion trainer. I will never be happy if I’m not. I need 253 other horses to do it and I’m going to make my life a misery – but it’ll be worth it.’ Or you can adopt the Prescott principle that I’d prefer to train for the people I like. I’m not going to be champion at anything but that doesn’t matter.”
Prescott is so obviously intelligent he could have become a criminal barrister – a vocation that always intrigued him. But he shakes his head when I ask if he regrets the sacrifices which mean that, living alone, he gets up at 3.30 every morning so he can train horses before having his “thinking time” each evening. “No, because training has brought me love and joy. It’s like being a schoolmaster. How can you be a schoolmaster year after year with parents, governors and children driving you mad? But the satisfaction of turning students, most of whom aren’t very talented, into nice people who will have a good life is tremendous. All the time you’re hoping a very bright kid will come along. You enjoyed teaching the others, but there’s that hope that an Alpinista will emerge.”
Alpinista is a daughter of Frankel, one of the greatest racehorses in history, and Prescott “trained her mother, her grandmother and endless aunts and they have made my career. I’m fully aware I’m nearer the end than the beginning and so the opportunities decline.”
If victory eludes him at Longchamp, Prescott will think of the day which changed his perspective forever. He was only 17 when, while racing as a jump jockey, he suffered a terrible fall that left him totally paralysed. “I think of it every day because it was the most influential moment in my life,” he says. “I broke my back at Wye while riding a horse called Pike’s Fancy. He got brought down and, while there was no pain, I tried to tell them not to move me. But I couldn’t speak and then I realised I couldn’t blink.”
His paralysis was so absolute that, at night in hospital, he couldn’t even close his eyes to sleep. His tongue was pegged and there was nothing he could do until the nurses finished chatting outside and came at last to his bedside where they would shut his eyelids. “It was a salutary lesson and I was terrified every day, thinking: ‘I can lie here till I’m 90,’” he says. “That lasted six weeks and then I suddenly felt somebody putting a pin in my foot. I was still terrified until all the feeling finally came back and I was able to leave hospital after nine months.”
Prescott knows that losing a mere horse race can never compare to such desolation. The accident also means he savours life every day and fizzes with the enthusiasm of a man 50 years younger. His most riotous anecdotes feature many of his “lovely girlfriends” but Prescott has never wanted to be a husband or a father.
Prescott is still an old romantic and he tells me about his first girlfriend. “She was 17 and I was 15-and-a-bit,” he grins. “I lied about my age and she said: ‘Where are we going on holiday?’ National hunt racing stopped in July and I’d just read The Sun Also Rises by Hemingway. I heard myself saying: ‘Pamplona.’ All I knew about Pamplona, apart from the running of the bulls, was that it was in Spain. We went from Portsmouth to Paris to Marseille to Santander to Pamplona. It took three days and things had not gone on as well as I’d hoped.
“But when we got to Pamplona it was evening. Twenty thousand people were in the square, singing the Pamplona song and dressed in red neckerchiefs and white T-shirts. I stood there with my throbbing, pulsating acne and thought: ‘This is life. I’m here, with a girlfriend, some bulls and everybody’s pissed. Fantastic.
1 Mendocino
2 Vadeni
3 Do Deuce
4 Al Hakeem
5 Deep Bond
6 Alpinista
7 Westover
8 Luxembourg
9 Grand Glory
10 Titleholder
11 Onesto
12 Alenquer
13 Bubble Gift
14 Broome
15 Sealiway
16 Mostahdaf
17 Mishriff
18 Torquator Tasso
19 Mare Australis
20 Stay Foolish
“I don’t know whether she felt the same. She went to work in Canada, I was injured soon after and it came to an end. But every July, ever since, I get a card with a bull on it from her. On the card she just writes her initial. I wish I could send one back but she never lets me know where she is.”
Prescott moves on to boxing and a different girlfriend. “Boxing’s the ultimate, isn’t it? Whether you approve or disapprove, the courage is incredible. I had another girlfriend who disapproved of all those sports. She was lovely, a vet with long black hair. Her family were Guardian through-and-through – but lovely people. I said to Janet: ‘You cannot complain about boxing if you’ve never seen a fight. I’m off to the big fight at the Albert Hall so come along. If you don’t like it, fine. But see for yourself.’
“We went to see the great [Ghanaian boxer] Azumah Nelson and she wore a pretty black-and-white polka dot dress. We got there just before the main fight and, as Janet sat down, there was a noise like a ripe melon hitting the ground as this fellow crashed to the floor. His gumshield flew out and just missed her dress. She wanted to leave but I said: ‘Please yourself, I’m staying.’
“She stayed and Azumah Nelson came out next. He looked marvellous, defending his title for God knows how many times. Nelson controlled the fight for five rounds but he got tired, and all he could do was hold and keep pushing the young lad [Jim McDonnell] round. He was in desperate trouble in round 10. Out of nowhere he produced this fantastic left hook, woof, and [McDonnell] crashed to the ground. Janet leapt up and said: ‘Yeah!’ I said: ‘Got you!’ There’s pleasure in seeing really nice, lovely people slightly compromised by the real world.”
Prescott laughs before we return to the dream of winning the Arc on Sunday. He compares himself to an old man trying to keep a fire alive but worried he might extinguish it.
“If Alpinista wins it will keep the fire flickering a little longer. I’ve trained over 2,000 winners and the one thing that’ll stop me is I will find it harder and harder to fill the place with young stock, because most of my owners are in their 80s. Last year we had 46 winners from 50 boxes, three Group Ones, the most winning horse in Britain and, instead of 30 yearlings, all I got was 20. But, despite doing better than 98% of other trainers, I don’t feel bitter. That’s life – and I understand it.”
