Balding Rise Impressive and Shows Youth Isn't Everything

Training racehorses is a young person’s game, according to some.

It’s a theory that has legs; early starts, late finishes in the peak months, keeping owners happy, chasing new ones, dealing with staff and media, running the business, buying new horses - an all-encompassing, time-consuming pursuit if ever there was one.

You can see why the energy of a Duracell bunny or a solid support team is needed to succeed and many owners are also said to want a trainer younger than themselves.

At 41, Dan Skelton isn’t a youngster, but he is a generation away from Paul Nicholls and Nicky Henderson, and is the undisputed and perhaps now unstoppable force of jump racing in Britain, while George Boughey, who was born in 1992, has done his bit for the younger brigade on the flat this season through the exploits of the brilliant 2,000 Guineas winner Bow Echo.

However, a glorious campaign that has included memorable victories for Kalpana in the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes and Item in York’s Juddmonte International, means Andrew Balding is underlining his status as the nation’s number one operator in the summer code.

What maybe blows the ‘young person theory’ out of the water is that it’s taken him more than 20 years to reach the summit.

He assumed training duties from his celebrated father Ian in 2003 and won the Oaks at Epsom with Casual Look months later, but had to wait 11 years for his next domestic Group 1 - Elm Park in what was the Racing Post Trophy at Doncaster - while his second Classic (Kameko in the 2,000 Guineas) came during Covid, which tells you all about the gap between that and his first.

Two emerging and big-spending ownership groups, Qatar Racing, whose colours were carried by Kameko, and King Power Racing, allowed his Kingsclere outfit in Hampshire to grow in the second part of the 2010s, although their interests have since, for differing reasons, diminished, which means Balding deserves even more credit for his rise.

At the start of play on Monday morning, he had saddled more winners (169) than anyone in Britain this year, while his prize-money haul of just over £7.9 million is bettered only by Irish colossus Aidan O’Brien and is put into perspective when the third highest-earning trainer in the list is William Haggas with £5.4m; the outstanding Karl Burke is fourth on £3.9m.

A key element of the Balding ascent has been the patronage of world-renowned owner-breeders Juddmonte, which supplied him with another 2,000 Guineas hero in Chaldean and also own Kalpana and Item, while their Blue Bolt’s explosive trio of Group 1s this term is testament to the trainer’s fine touch.

Many of his counterparts will envy that firepower, dreaming one day they come across a top-notcher to launch them into the big time, and when you have Juddmonte, which perhaps produced the greatest of them all in Frankel, in your yard, there is every chance of finding a star. The reality, nevertheless, is one has to prove he or she merits that opportunity and Balding has certainly done that.

He has also got to the point where he has not just equalled his late father’s achievements, but is close to surpassing them - if he hasn’t done so already.

Champion trainer in 1971 thanks largely to the legendary Mill Reef, who won the Derby, Eclipse, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes and Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe that year, Ian was also responsible for saddling more than 1,700 winners and his other greats included Selkirk and Lochsong.

Inheriting such a famous, historic and established operation was a wonderful platform for his son, but it can come with pressure, and it’s never a given that such a succession results in continued glory; you don’t have to look too far for examples of that.

Balding has proved an outstanding exception, though. He finished runner-up in the trainers’ title in 2021 and 2024 and has already bettered his previous record prize-money from 2025 of £7.2m, which he has done without last year’s champion juvenile Gewan, who sadly died in a racecourse gallop at Kempton in April.

Champions Day at Ascot on October 17 will likely determine if he becomes champion trainer for the first time or if the honour again finds its way to O'Brien (the title race officially ends on December 31), while it is easy to see Kalpana going close in Sunday’s Arc at Longchamp - the race Juddmonte covet over everything else (think Dancing Brave and Enable etc).

If either come off, they would be Balding’s crowning achievement and would also come at the age of 53, so maybe training’s not such a young person’s game after all.