Off and Running : English Trainer John Gosden Fast Making a Name in U.S. Racing

In the early morning, as a set of horses is about to leave his barn, trainer John Gosden checks them individually and gives each exercise rider specific instructions.

“He’ll try to go faster, but a minute and change (for five furlongs) will do,” Gosden says to one rider.

After giving similar orders to a few other exercise riders that file past, Gosden stops a horse, making an adjustment in the girth.

A couple of horses later, Gosden says to a rider: “We want a strong finish out of this one. He’ll be needing that.”

It seems as if the parade of Gosden horses will never end. Surely, Lawrence of Arabia didn’t have as many camels, or Hannibal as many elephants.

At the Hollywood Park meet that closed earlier this month, Gosden had 50 stalls, space he earns by stabling his horses there all year long. At Del Mar, because of barn limitations, Gosden has about 30 horses on the grounds. The 35-year-old trainer also has 10 horses campaigning in New York.

Gosden horses don’t run that often, but when they do get to the races, they are tough to beat. In the Daily Racing Form’s most recent tabulations, Gosden ranks fifth in the country in purses this year with $2.7 million.

Gosden has ranked between fifth and eighth in the nation since 1983, which was his breakout year with a horse named Bates Motel. Sore-footed and difficult to handle, Bates Motel gave Gosden his first championship, winning the male handicap title. Gosden added another title in 1984 with Royal Heroine, who won the $1-million Breeders’ Cup Mile Stakes at Hollywood Park and was voted the year’s best female turf horse.

“Nice horses and good owners make good trainers,” Gosden says. “A trainer’s only as good as his horses. Look at a chap like John Sadler. He’s always had a high percentage of winners to runners, but then he gets a top filly like Melair and everybody’s calling him a genius. But even before Melair, he was a good trainer.”

Before Bates Motel, who won major races in both the West (the Santa Anita Handicap) and the East (the Monmouth Handicap), Gosden was making progress but hadn’t become a national name. The son of an English trainer who died when John was 16, the Cambridge University-educated Gosden received his first United States training license late in 1979, but his horses won only eight races the next year.

By 1982, however, Gosden’s barn had edged over the $1-million mark in purses and won 48 races. This year, Gosden has already won 14 stakes, two less than all of 1985. He won the Hollywood Park training title, and he’s at Del Mar to defend the championship he gained with 15 winners last summer.

All but six of Gosden’s 26 winners at Hollywood Park were on grass this season, which gives him an advantage at Del Mar, where half of the oceanside track’s 14 important races are on the turf. Already Gosden is lining up some of his big guns --Zoffany is scheduled to run in the $150,000 Eddie Read Handicap here Aug. 10 and La Koumia might start in the $75,000 Palomar Handicap the day before.

Zoffany and La Koumia are two horses Gosden hopes to have ready for the Budweiser-Arlington Million at Arlington Park outside Chicago on Aug. 31. And just like Charlie Whittingham and Wayne Lukas, familiar names at the top of the national money list, Gosden has reliable Million backups such as Clever Song and Alphabatim in his barn.

Of the 140 horses nominated for the Million, 10 were made eligible by Whittingham and eight came from Gosden’s string.

Towser Gosden, John’s father, once told his son that “any intelligent person would find something else to do besides training horses.” But John ignored the advice, and after working for Noel Murless and Vincent O’Brien in Europe, he came to the United States in 1979, hoping to learn the American methods of training from Whittingham, the West Coast dean.

Twice Whittingham told Gosden he didn’t have room for an assistant. Whittingham was already developing a few future head trainers, one being Dick Lundy, who has had recent success in New York. So Gosden worked for Tommy Doyle in California, also served an apprenticeship with Gene Jacobs in New York.

“I wasn’t able to work with Charlie (Whittingham), but I was able to watch him,” Gosden said. “That was the next-best thing. In England, the trainers’ yards are so far apart, you never know what the other guys are doing. In the States, you’re rubbing elbows with everybody else every day of the week.”

Like Whittingham, Gosden doesn’t run many young horses, mainly because his clients race their 2-year-olds and 3-year-olds in Europe before they’re sent to California.

“The pattern has been for my European owners to buy the horses here, run them over there for a time and then give them to me,” Gosden said. “They’re usually in fairly good condition when I get them, because in England, with no year-round racing and all the running on grass, there’s more time spent on the individual care of each horse. But a trainer’s job is tougher here, because it’s a 12-month schedule and tracks are running races five and six days a week.”

Gosden’s wife Rachel, a lawyer, was a friend from their Cambridge days. They have two children. Asked if he would ever consider returning to his homeland, Gosden said, “Highly unlikely; I’ve still got this big mortgage to pay here.”

So John H.M. Gosden (one stable hand jokingly says the initials stand for “His Majesty,” but it’s really Harry Martin) wants to do some more winning on these shores.

Gosden says: “You always remember what Charlie says--the pole gets mighty slippery at the top.”

Gosden’s not only been watching Whittingham, he’s been listening to him as well.