Hammond witnessed at first hand the way the horse finished like the proverbial train to go under by a rapidly dwindling neck in the French Derby three weeks ago. Because he trained the colt’s sire, Montjeu, to win a whole host of top-class races including the Irish Derby and the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, he is fully aware the favourite will be far more effective over today’s extra furlong and a half.
“I have huge respect for Hurricane Run,” he says. “He is a really good horse and I rate him a worthy favourite.”
Can he be beaten? “Well, he’s the one in the box seat.” That’s an evasive answer but it’s also a cautious one, typical of a man who often gives the impression of being a reserved ex-public school type, the sort of Englishman characterised by diplomats the world over. There are, however, no such reservations when he talks of his own horse, Walk In The Park, who is also a son of Montjeu.
“He has done really well since the Derby and I think he is on the up because he went particularly well when he did a bit of work last week. He is in good shape and on top of his game so I’m hopeful he is going to make a race of it.”
Most British and Irish racegoers first took real note of the colt when he started favourite for the Lingfield Derby Trial and threw away his chance by pulling hard for his head. “He has always pulled and he wasn’t easy as a young horse but he needs a good pace and the Lingfield race was a joke. The time was more than four seconds slower than the Oaks Trial the same day. That represents something like 60 yards, which gives you an idea of how slow they went.”
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Walk In The Park did not take anything near such a strong hold in the Derby but he got himself into a muck sweat before the start. “That’s him, he is always going to get himself a bit worked up, and horses tend to do that more at Epsom than elsewhere. The paddock there is not ideal for horses like him with everything very much on top of them. There is much less razzmatazz at The Curragh and in any case Montjeu was a bit like that, too. But he and his progeny get through it.”
If things went wrong before the off at Epsom, they were just as bad when the stalls opened. Walk In The Park was shuffled back and going down into Tattenham Corner he had only two behind him. Not until well into the straight did he start to get into gear. Nothing was finishing faster in the final furlong but he was still five lengths behind Motivator at the line. Many blamed Alan Munro for getting too far out of his ground but the trainer is very much a pragmatist and he sees things quite differently.
“You have to accept that things don’t always go the way you want in a race but that may not be the jockey’s fault. Walk In The Park is obviously not a horse you would want to gun leaving the stalls because he would run too free if you did that. In fact, he broke a bit flat-footed, one of the others came over from the other side of the course and took his ground. All of a sudden he was behind a wall of horses. Alan very sensibly dropped him to the inside, saved ground all the way and he finished strongly. I thought he rode him really well.”
The tall Hammond was born in Bromley, Kent, and educated at Rugby but he was brought up in the Co Meath countryside between Dunboyne and Ratoath. There were always horses and ponies around the place and when he was 15 he started riding out for Jim Dreaper in his school holidays. “There were the most wonderful horses there like Lough Inagh, Colebridge, Brown Lad and Ten Up. For a guy of my age it was all very exciting.” He continued to ride at Dreaper’s when he went to Trinity to read for a degree in business studies and he had a handful of mounts in bumpers but without success. “I think I was the wrong size and shape, and I never rode a winner.”
Things weren’t so good at Trinity, either, and halfway through the four-year course he packed it in. “It’s not something I’m proud of but I was never as enthusiastic as I should have been and I decided to go into horses full time.”
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Hammond had already been going round the sales with Cormac McCormack and he went to work at the bloodstock agent’s stud, helping to prepare the yearlings for sale. Then he joined trainer Patrick Haslam as a pupil-assistant in Newmarket but he still had no firm plans to make training a career. After a couple of years he left for a job on a nearby stud and then went to work for a vet in California. Just under a year later he was back in Newmarket and Lester Piggott, a close friend of McCormack, fixed him up with a job as assistant to the legendary French trainer Andre Fabre in Chantilly.
Little more than two seasons later, in 1987, he set up on his own. It’s a crucial make-or-break time that is a struggle for many fledgling trainers and an expensive disappointment for some. Hammond sees it differently. “Starting isn’t particularly difficult. You begin with a handful of horses and you do a lot of the work yourself so you are able to control the costs. It’s always exciting starting something new and every winner you get is a bonus.”
He soon progressed to training Group winners and in 1991 Suave Dancer put him on the map by winning the French Derby, the Irish Champion Stakes and the Arc. There have been many other Group One winners, too. He is helped by his wife, Georgina, who is also English and had considerable success as a jockey in America, riding 150 winners in some two and a half years.
When Hammond is asked to pinpoint the reasons for his success, he sidesteps the question with a fascinating insight into the way trainers operate. “When a jockey rides a bad race it’s very visual because everybody can see it for themselves but nobody sees the howlers that we make behind closed doors. I can’t speak for other trainers, and I am only talking about myself when I say this, but for every winner on the racetrack there is plenty of mess left behind at home.”
Tomorrow Hammond will be 45 and he hopes that Walk In The Park will enable him to celebrate a day early. He doesn’t labour the point but the trainer of the favourite is none other than his old mentor, Fabre. Victory would sound sweet to the pupil who shone at Chantilly rather than Trinity.