Turf Talk Newsletter – 04 September, 2025

• His good friend Sir Alex Ferguson looks set to have runners with the Epsom-based trainer in the near future
• Why many owners are leaving the sport
• The renaissance of Epsom as a hotbed for training racehorses and why he started a satellite yard in Bahrain
• The new Chair of the BHA Lord Allen finally starting his role has given him hope for the future of racing in Britain

• Racing trainer George Baker is one of a small number of trainers based in Epsom – home of the Derby – which he says needs reinvigorating after coming under heavy criticism in this year’s renewal

• Baker, a former banker and journalist, started training horses in 2008 and now has a satellite yard in Bahrain as well as his Epsom home

Sir Alex Ferguson will soon have horses with me again – he was one of the first people to support my operation

Sir Alex was very heavily involved with us right from the beginning which was fantastic. He was a great supporter of ours. He hasn’t got a horse in training with us at the moment which we are about to address.

He will be back on board very soon. When we started many years back, he was one of the first people who supported us and people saw him having horses with us, which was a great filip for us right at the beginning.

He seems to just love his racing almost as much as if not more than his football

He absolutely loves his racing. He came on board with us probably about 2011-12 when he was still a manager at Man United. And that was fascinating for us. It gave us the opportunity to go and spend time with him and have some fabulous European nights at Old Trafford and then sitting in his little room under the stands with a bottle of something decent and hearing all the tales and then the next morning going out to Carrington was absolutely fascinating.

One of the most amazing things that struck me when we were there was how brilliant he was at delegating.

You always sort of imagined that he would be an incredibly busy man but then going to Carrington in the mornings and we’d sit in his office and after chattering away for half an hour or so, I’d go, ‘Alex, we must go. We’ve taken up far too much of your time!’

And he’d go, ‘No, no, don’t go. Don’t go, because everybody’s doing everything they should.  Everything’s sorted.’

He said to me if you can delegate, it means you’re surrounded by the right people. And he was absolutely superb at that.

And the other thing he taught me right at the beginning was you’ve got to listen to everybody, however mad, wacky or offbeat or offbeat, somebody’s idea might appear,  you’ve just got to listen to everybody because if you listen to someone and 99 % of it goes over your head and means nothing. But if you can take 1% out of a conversation, you might be able to adapt it to your business.’

And I think that was one of the reasons for his longevity as a manager. He never ever went, ‘Wow, I’ve sorted it out, I know how to do it.’

He always reacted and adapted and looked for the edge and the angle.

One of the biggest commodities in horse racing is luck

The key thing is definitely surrounding yourself with the right people. You see a lot of people in all walks of life when you’re setting up a business, and I certainly fell into the trap of wanting to do everything.

You want to be on top of everything and you imagine that the whole business is going to fall to pieces without you running every single facet of it. And of course it is completely the reverse.

Actually, if you can delegate and have the right people around you and I suppose reporting to you about the various aspects of the business, and you could be sitting there on the bridge running the show, that means you’ve got the right people around you.

In our game, as in football, I’m sure you get a lot of people who come to you and they’re suggesting a different methodology or different things to do on the gallops.

Some of them are completely wild and might make no sense at all, but, you should hear people out.

That is the other thing he taught me; a degree of politeness whereby you listen to people, you hear people out, and if you can take something from what they tell you, then so much the better.

Again, as with all sports, one of the biggest commodities is luck. You can win or lose a horse race by the width of a strip of paper. And no one asks you at the end of the year how many seconds you’ve had. It’s all about winning. But it’s the same for the golfer who’s putt lips out.

Why we opened up a satellite yard in Bahrain – the country isn’t trying to compete with Dubai

It was. It came to us really. I got a call about five years ago. I was out on the gallops, and someone rang me up and said they were calling from the office of Sheikh Salman bin Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, in Bahrain and I thought, rather like the first time when Sir Alex rang me, I thought it was a friend trying to take the mickey.

It turned out that it was his office, and they explained what they were trying to do and my wife and I headed over there and were immediately impressed by their enthusiasm which was just tangible from the word go.

They’re not trying to emulate Dubai or replicate Dubai. They just want to be part of what is becoming a sort of Middle East swing for the racing season through the winter. They’ve more than done that.

The International Trophy, their main race, remains a Group 2, and all being well it’ll be a Group 1 next year which is remarkable in the space of five years.

We were just so impressed by the facilities and the ambition of the people involved.

It’s fantastic for our owners. They incentivise them; the Bahrain Turf Club fly the horses out for the Turf Series, which runs from just before Christmas to the week before Cheltenham, at their cost. They give our owners $10,000 to spend in the Kingdom when they are over there and you are competing in $80-$100,000 races.

Would you rather be at Wolverhampton, Southwell or Lingfield in January, or in Bahrain with a bit of sun on your back and running around for decent prize money.

We love it because we’ve had plenty of winners there. Plenty of other trainers have gone out there and found that it hasn’t suited them or their horses, but we are very much committed, and a lot of the upcoming sales will revolve around us freshening up the team to go there this winter.

Five years we took two (horses to Bahrain) and then last year we had five, the previous year we had seven. I’d love to have sort of six, seven, eight again this year. We’ve got a few already on the team who will be going back over there.

We’ve got a lot of owner interest, and we love it.

It’s so competitive here that it’s another string to our bow that means we can provide competitive sport for our owners on an international stage.

The journey from starting up in 2008 to the present day

This mad gig of training resources was no more than a very far-fetched dream for most of my life and a completely unattainable dream.

The catalyst really was a bank called Barings, where I worked,  that went bust in 1995 which was not all of my fault!

It was Nick Leeson’s and the chain of command that allowed him to be in a position to do what he did.

I went to go and live in Vietnam for a couple of years after that. I met Paul Webber at a dinner party and he was looking for an assistant trainer.

I had no more than a passion for the sport, but he took me on.

Then I got the opportunity to work with the Sportsman newspaper which was started in 2006 but folded.

So, I went off to the British Racing School, did all the courses and we had our first runner in March of 2008.

Back then, the all-weather was much less competitive than it is now. You go to Wolverhampton now and you run in a Maiden, and you find you’re taking on a Godolphin son of Dubawi.

But back then you could actually pick and choose your way through the programme.

Everybody wants to go to Goodwood or Ascot, but if you’ve got average horses, you’ve got to be realistic. So, you’ve got to go and win the claimer at Wolverhampton on a wet and windy February night.

And we did that. We were winning bad races. But because we were there and winning, I was getting quite a lot of media coverage very early on, purely through placing the horses correctly and not tilting at windmills. That gave us the early traction.

Now we have recently moved to Epsom which is, I hope, the final move.

There’s a genuine feel that Epsom is back on the map for training horses

It’s fantastic. Downs House, where I am, is a furlong from the Derby start. I drive over the Derby track every morning on the way into work.

The history of the place is extraordinary. The only thing Epson lacks at the moment from a racehorse training perspective, is racehorses.

It has the best facilities, comparable with Lambourn, Middleham and Newmarket.

Back in the 50s, Winston Churchill had all his horses trained there when there were 800 horses being trained there.

Sadly, a lot of these ancient stables disappeared under property developments.

Now with Downs House and Jim Boyle’s yard at a renovated South Hatch, and other establishments, there’s a genuine feel that you can have good horses trained at Epsom again.

We’ve got a huge catchment area over the hill called London. We’ve just got to persuade everyone to wander up the hill from London and come and get involved because there’s literally no reason not to.

Already plenty of our owners are based in London. We’ve made a beginning and it’s no more than a beginning but it’s exciting times and we’ve got all the sales upcoming and so we’re going to go roll the dice and buy a lot of horses and then persuade everyone that Epsom is the place to have them in training.

The Jockey Club need to make the Derby “London’s Race” and it should move back to a midweek race after its continued struggles

The Jockey Club is not making a huge amount of sense at the moment. A disappointing attendance at Cheltenham definitely impacts the bigger picture.

But they’ve got a 990 year lease on Epsom and they are committed to it.

Everybody there is incredibly enthusiastic and really wanting us to do well and wanting our presence there to generate interest in getting more people to the place.

The Derby in terms of attendance hit a low this year.

They desperately want to get both the place back as a training centre and get that iconic horse race back. The Derby itself is a great spectacle; it’s just everything that goes around it.

I was very aware of arriving in Epsom and talking to people and people going, ‘When’s the Derby?’

I think they’ve just got to strip it back a little bit, make it Epsom’s party. It’s the 250th Derby in 2029 off the top of my head. Like the Melbourne Cup, it did stop the nation.

The whole of London would come up the hill. I think that they’ve got to engage with London and make it London’s race. It’s not going to happen next year, but in 2029, 250th, it can really be a massive event.

Personally, there are media rights issues and television issues, but I would personally much rather have it back on a weekday. Obviously, it used to be a Wednesday.

I would love to see it on a Wednesday. It’s a shame when it’s competing with football. This year the race was half an hour earlier to make sure it didn’t impact ITV’s coverage of the five o’clock kick off of England and Andorra.

When you’re playing second fiddle to England v Andorra you know there are problems.

It should be a standalone event. It is a great event. It still captures the public imagination.

I have a strong sense that since the Derby moved from Wednesday to Saturday that the public engagement in the race and the meeting in general has been on the wane. I think that’s sad. But I don’t think it’s beyond redemption.

When you look at the numbers and good work down the road at Royal Ascot the attendance figures were fantastic, through the roof.

Royal Ascot is raging away on the numbers. People are going racing.

I think on the hill you just strip it back to basics and just say come for free and you’ll be able to have a pint with your mates, bring a picnic, have a bet.

Also just bring everybody into the infield and create a bit of a party atmosphere and maybe get the fair there for a few days beforehand.

The leisure pound is so important right now – it’s all well and good big owners spending big money in racing but it isn’t relevant to the bigger picture

I think we have a tremendous dynamic through the season of all these amazing Festivals that starts pretty much with the Craven and then the Guineas and then rolls on through all the trials. You’ve got the Derby, Royal Ascot, then Newmarket’s July meeting, Goodwood, York.

There really is a fantastic dynamic to the Flat season. But we don’t have a sort of conclusion like Cheltenham.

If you go racing this summer, obviously as I do on a regular basis, there are a lot of people there. They are really enjoying it. The sport’s fantastic. The protagonists here in terms of the jockeys and trainers and horses are up there with the best in the world. We have the wonderful diversity of race courses, amazingly unique venues and we have a fantastic product.

But we do have headwinds against the sport.  The top end of the sales is always the ones that are reported on. It’ll all seem gilded and wonderful because Sheikh Mohammed and Amo Racing and the Coolmore battalions and the other big guns will all go head-to-head.

For them money is no object and not relevant to the bigger picture.

But it would be very interesting to see how the sales are below the rarefied top, because people are nervous in this country.

People are worried about the autumn statement and the budget and how that’s going to impact people’s affordability to go and actually have fun.

There are people in London or all around the country who are hanging on to their jobs and there’s a worry about what the next few months bring.

That’s not a great environment to rush into London and get six people around the table and tell them to go and buy a yearling.

But the flip side and one of the legacies of Covid is that people want to have fun because they don’t know what’s around the corner.

People still want to have fun. If you give up your leisure choice, what have you got?

The leisure pound is so important to people because it is why they work so hard. And that is under extreme pressure right now. It’s a scary time to be involved in the leisure industry.

Prize money around the world and outside of Britain is outrageous – it makes me envious as a British trainer

It is really tough out there. You look around the world at racing jurisdictions where they have a PMU or a Tote Monopoly and you see a very, very viable and vibrant business. Look at Australia, look at Hong Kong, America, France and Japan.

It’s just outrageous. In Australia you look at a journeyman midweek card at a country meeting and a maiden running around for $20,000 to the winner.

Prize money is just not part of the business model. We’d love to be running around for more. In many jurisdictions you win a horse race or certainly two in a year and you pay for your training fee. I’ve had people leaving the sport, genuinely leaving the sport because I’ve won them a horse race and my invoice at the end of the month is more than that winning.

It makes me really envious of people who train in other jurisdictions. But I love the sport here.

The vested interest of some in the sport drives me bonkers and influential people have massively held the sport back

I hope so!

The vested interests in the sport drive me absolutely bonkers.

We’re in this for the greater good of the whole sport. Yet you get people fighting their corner in such a short-sighted way that it is actually mind-boggling at times.

It makes me wonder how bright these people can be if they are genuinely feeling that their own marginal vested interests are more important.

I’ve spoken to Lord Allen. He is a heavyweight. He has held several feet to the flame here and said come on boys and girls, you’ve really got to pull yourselves together.

I see hope and I see progress in what he is doing.

But there are a lot of very intransigent people within the sport who have been very influential within their own vested areas.

That has massively held us back.

I just hope now that he can get them into a room and lock the door and explain how the path to the greater good is going to require sacrifice. Short-term sacrifice, hopefully, for the long term good.

We have to be optimistic that he’s going to give us a real chance. I enjoyed my conversation with him. I ended it genuinely believing that here was a guy who was passionate to do the right thing within the industry.

It’s impossible to compete with the Irish in racing 

It is almost impossible competing with these guys.

But one of the wonderful things about our sport is that one of the big battalions can go and spend £3m or £4m on a yearling. And we can go and spend £25,000 pounds on a yearling. And we can end up in the paddock at Ascot, and we can beat them. That is why the dream is alive for owners.

If just spending the big bucks guaranteed success, the rest of us wouldn’t bother. We wouldn’t have a chance. We wouldn’t have our owners.

It is hard. It’s becoming harder.

It is incredibly hard to compete and that is why from the outset we have had the mantra, ‘Have horse, will travel.’ You have got to go off piste.

That is why something for a team like us winning at Royal Ascot this year is really amazing and it’s our Olympics. A day like that is completely extraordinary because you spend most of the week wandering around watching the usual suspects lifting up trophies.

I would love to win the Melbourne Cup

I would love to win the Melbourne Cup. For years and years and before I became a racehorse trainer, I’ve annoyed Mrs Baker by setting the alarm to watch the race in the middle of the night.

It would be fantastic to be involved.

Aside from the Melbourne Cup, closer to home and the Arc de Triomphe would be right up there.

That’s a fabulous horse race. If you said one race in the rest of your life, it would be that Sunday at the beginning of October in the Bois de Boulogne in the Arc de Triomphe.