Amo Racing’s Flat supremacy

You don’t often walk into a racing yard and find the trainer engrossed with two owners –apropos of horse names – discussing the role in the French Revolution of Count Mirabeau,  but Dominic Ffrench Davis is a rounded man. When I first met Dominic 25 years ago he was a young start-up trainer who’d had to wait a year for a couple of winners. But these days he is being noticed for more than just the unusual moniker (worked into the family line by a female forbear with a touch of grandeur who didn’t fancy being just another Davis).

The first big race of the Flat, the Lincoln Handicap, went to the Ffrench Davis-trained Mr Professor, who was going so easily under David Egan two furlongs out that he could have carried two jockeys and still won. Even more importantly for the High View yard in Lambourn is Mr Professor, whom Dom had used in the autumn as a workhorse for some of the stable’s best inmates. He’s owned by Kia Joorabchian and his Amo Racing, the fastest-growing empire on the Flat.

The years inbetween at the less fashionable end of the sport weren’t always easy despite successes with horses like Sir Ninja and Indeed. You get the idea when Dominic’s wife Avery says: ‘The first priority was always to pay the wages – even if that made things tight at home.’ Getting the season’s winners into double figures was sometimes a decent result. But what keeps small-yard trainers going is the potential field marshal’s baton in the knapsack – the inner belief that given the right quality of horse they can do as well as the sport’s superstars. Now Dom has been given the Amo, so to speak, he is proving that he can.