ERIC ALSTON spent the first half of his training career fitting in the horses after his daily milk round. The idea that he would rise to racing’s top table would have brought a wry smile to his weathered features. Even recently, he never imagined he would see a day like this.
Last week at York, Alston secured his first group one prize at the age of 62. “You always hope it will happen but never really believe it,” he said. But today, barring cruel abandonment or a formbook upheaval, he could add a second such win, and on the racecourse he calls home.
Reverence, having routed his rivals in the Nunthorpe Stakes, comes back across the Pennines to Haydock for the Betfred Sprint Cup and, if the sodden ground stays just the right side of unraceable, he will be a short price to embellish the expressions of wonderment prevalent at his 28-horse yard.
Alston is a Lancastrian, born to “farming stock” in Preston. It is just a few exits down the M6 to Haydock, where one of the racecourse directors, Gary Middlebrook, also happens to be both breeder and owner of Reverence.
All this may seem a shade fanciful but the real Mills and Boon part is yet to come. The horse might never have raced at all, such were the injuries he sustained in his younger days. And then there is the woman seeing out her last few weeks at the Alston yard, having spent two decades looking after the three flagship sprinters this stable has produced.
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To first paint the picture of Alston, though, it is necessary to relate his brief riding career and the return to the profession he was born into. “My father was a dairy farmer, close to where I am now, and delivered milk round the area,” he said. “I rode showjumpers as a kid but I always wanted to go into racing.”
For three years, he was apprenticed to Walter Wharton at Wetherby. “When I started at 17, I could do 5st 10lb easily. I had ten winners in my second year but then I just grew. The rides dried up and I’d no money, so I went back farming.”
There he stayed for almost 20 years, in which he married his wife, Sue, and settled back into his native area. “It was when I bought a couple of horses for the wife to ride that we got bitten by the bug again,” he explained. “We started with a permit, just bad-legged jumpers for a few years. Our first winner was at Cartmel.
“For many years, we did a milk round in the village, the wife and I. We’d get up early, milk the cows, do our round and then go racing. When we got home, we’d do the evening milking, too. Then Stack Rock came along and changed everything. She was a massive three-year-old and was sent to us to go jumping. She didn’t stay and we ran her over all kind of trips before dropping her to six furlongs. She finished second and just went on from there.”
Stack Rock took Alston to racecourses he had previously known only by reputation. Her career peaked as runner-up to Lochsong in the Prix de l’Abbaye at Longchamp in 1993. By then, Sue and Eric had taken two decisions — they had given up the milk round and given up on jumps horses.
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More recently, Alston has excelled with Tedburrow, who raced for the yard until the age of 12 and became the oldest horse to win a Pattern race. “He’d have kept going even longer but he had one joint that bothered him. He’s a marvellous lad and he’s still with us now, running around the field,” he said.
Reverence’s arrival, last year, was not instantly auspicious. He had suffered two fractures of his pelvis, first when trained by Mark Johnston and then by William Haggas. At four, he had still not seen a racecourse. But Alston, with the patience of a born countryman, revived the invalid and allowed him to produce his ability — the Nunthorpe was his seventh win in little over a year.
Like Stack Rock and Tedburrow before him, Reverence has been overseen by Amanda Neill, who joined Alston as a 13-year-old. “When he started winning handicaps last back-end, Amanda said one day that she thought he was as good as the other two. I was struck by that — and she’s been proved right.”
Neill rode Stack Rock in her first race, at Haydock, and will be present today with Reverence. “She’s leaving soon to have a baby,” Alston explained, “but not until after Paris. I haven’t had a runner in the Abbaye since Stack Rock but if all goes to plan, that’s where Reverence will go next month.”
First licence: 1981
Yard: Preston, Lancashire
First group one winner:
Reverence (2006 Nunthorpe Stakes)
Best horses trained: Reverence, Stack Rock, Tedburrow