It has been a long road back to the top of British horse racing for Henry Cecil, but the ten-times champion trainer issued a bullish report on his two fillies, Timepiece and Aviate, ahead of Friday’s Oaks at Epsom.
Cecil, who has won the one mile four furlong contest a record-equalling eight times, believes he saddles one of his strongest teams going into the fillies’ Classic at the south of London course.
“The Oaks looks quite open this year, with several inexperienced fillies,” Cecil said. “I’m not saying I’m going to win it, but I’m very happy with the two I’ve got and I wouldn’t swap them.”
Cecil last won the Oaks with Light Shift in 2007, a victory which stemmed what appeared to be an almost terminal decline in his skills as a trainer. Having endured the sadness of seeing his twin brother die of cancer in 2000, an illness which would affect his stomach several years later, Cecil trained just 12 winners in 2005.
And yet one of the most popular British trainers of the modern era has already surpassed that tally this year and also carries a live chance of securing his fifth Derby — English flat racing’s premier Classic — at Epsom on Saturday with Bullet Train.
“It’s very kind of the public,” the 67-year-old Cecil said of the affection he receives from racegoers. “They have been very supportive, and I’m very much enjoying this way of life again. Long may it continue.”
Light Shift’s victory was the last time Cecil ran two fillies in the Oaks. Passage Of Time, who finished tenth that day, is a half-sister to Timepiece, and both are owned by Cecil’s long-standing patron Prince Khalid Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.
It is a family of thoroughbreds that Cecil knows well and perhaps it is that familiarity and fondness with the breed that may have clouded his judgement.
— AFP