Barnsley boy Mick Appleby enjoying life as a trainer with Group 1 aspirations for star sprinter Danzeno
Appleby has gradually built his yard up and now has a formidable team of horses including sprinting star Danzeno and big handicap hopeful Big Country
BARNSLEY boy Mick Appleby first came into contact with horses during the miners’ strike.
Now he’s surrounded by more than 90 of them.
His new Rutland base seems a million miles away from the mounted police he watched as a kid at the height of the 1980s pit troubles.
In reality it’s only about 80. But there have been many twists and turns along the path to Appleby becoming one of the most talented trainers around.
From teenage punter, picture framer, Ibiza barman, conditional jump jockey to head lad – now he has finally found his calling.
After five successful years at rented stables the other side of Newark from Southwell he took the plunge to buy a former polo yard and set about turning it into a tailor-made training complex.
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By Templegate
1.50 Sandown – Justice Lady: ‘She should get the run of the race and is talented’
2.10 Chester – Cape Coast: ‘Progressing well and should be involved’
2.25 Sandown – Purser: ‘Very imporessive when winning on debut at Newbury’
2.45 Chester – Sharp Defence: ‘Unlucky here in May and should relish this trip’
3.00 Sandown – Urban Fox: ‘Hasn’t had much go her way but capable on her day’
3.15 Beverley – Final Venture: ‘Nunthorpe was a tough ask but this is his level’
3.35 Sandown – Monarchs Glen: ‘Been gelded and that could spark him back into form’
He moved to his now 95-box base just down the road from Melton Mowbray – where they like their pies hand-raised and filled with pork – last December. The winners have continued to flow.
Appleby is up to 69 this year and looks odds-on to beat his previous best of 94 in 2015.
He told me: “The move went very well. The horses settled in quickly and started winning quickly. The first day we had runners we had a treble at Southwell.
“I just want to keep training winners and keep getting better class horses. Ideally I want 50 Saturday horses. We’re getting there.”
There’s little doubt about that. Bargain buy Big Country heads the Cambridgeshire betting after three wins this season and there are some grand plans for smart sprinter Danzeno.
The winner of a hot Ascot handicap in July is being aimed at the Portland at Doncaster’s St Leger meeting before another tilt at the Group 1 sprint on Champions’ Day.
He was third behind Muhaarar in that Ascot contest two years ago.
Godolphin castoff Kickboxer won at Thirsk on his debut for Appleby in May. He is being prepared for an autumn campaign starting with the Ayr Gold Cup.
Appleby revealed: “Danzeno has got odd feet – one bigger than the other. They’re also very flat so they bruise very easily – he feels every stone – so he’s had a few issues.
“He’s a good horse and a bit of a late developer. We’re half thinking of going to Dubai for the winter. I think he’d do well out there and I think he’d like the dirt as well.
“Kickboxer is a decent horse. I knew when we bought him he had issues. You don’t pick up a horse like him up for 16 grand if there’s not something wrong. I think we’ve sorted them all out now.
“He’ll have a good chance at Ayr if it comes up soft. If he goes and wins he’ll definitely go to Dubai.
“Guishan has done well. She’s only got two weeks left as she’s in foal. When they’re in foal it does sometimes improve them a bit.
“Hakam goes to Ascot next week. He ran a blinder there last time. He could be another possible Dubai horse if he goes up in the handicap a bit.”
While some of Appleby’s stars sun themselves in Dubai he’ll have a much bigger team for the domestic fare during the winter months.
Around 50 of his horses will race on the sand as he attempts to become champion all-weather trainer for the second time.
But it could all have been so different. It was only a suggestion from his granddad – who ran the White Rose pub at Wombwell – that set him on to a career in racing.
Appleby, 47, explained: “The only connection I had was going racing with my grandad – mainly to Doncaster and Pontefract.
“I used to watch racing all the time. My next-door neighbour used to take my bets for me – I would have been about 14. I used to do really well. One day I got a Lucky 15 up. It paid about £900 – that was a lot of money then.
“When I left school I went to work in a picture framing factory. I did about a month and I thought “this isn’t for me”.
“I was only about 7st – I was tiny so my grandad said “why don’t you have a go at racing”. I’d never even sat on a horse.
“I ordered the Horse And Hound to look for the jobs. There was a job advertised for a working pupil with a permit holder in Stow on the Wold.”
That trainer was Jane Pilkington. He learned to ride on Cheltenham Festival legend Willie Wumpkins – three-time winner of what is now the Pertemps Final.
As he became more competent in the saddle he moved on to Bob Hartop and Baz Richmond before getting a job as conditional jockey to John Manners.
‘Mad’ Manners had one of the more accurate nick names. Tales of his eccentric antics are legendary and Appleby has no shortage of them.
He remembered: “He was advertising for a conditional in the Racing Post. I saw he had one entered in a boys’ race at Nottingham in a juvenile hurdle first time out.
“I rang him up for the ride, a horse called Touch Silver, he said ‘you can ride it and it’s the interview – if you win on it the job’s yours’.
“I turned up and it was a pony – tiny. It had won the Brocklesby for Barry Hills. I asked the girl leading it up if it could jump and she said ‘oh yeah, it jumps the hedges around the farm’. It had never seen a hurdle.
“I sat out the back, gave it a school around and gradually got into the race – ended up winning by ten lengths.”
Life didn’t get any duller after moving to Manners’ rambling farm at Highworth near Swindon.
Appleby laughed: “He had this big old farmhouse. My bedroom was right down the end up in the loft. When it rained you had to put pans everywhere to catch the drips.
“I used to buy electric heaters but you had to hide them from Manners because if he found them he would take them away.
“The first night I was there I was in bed and I heard this noise. It was pitch black outside, about 2am. I looked out the window and there was Manners in his long johns, he had a torch tied to his lawnmower and he was cutting the grass.
“You never saw him before dinner time. He used to ride out in the pitch black in the middle of the night rounding up his cows.
“Fair play to him he knew his horses but he was crackers.”
Realising he couldn’t make it pay after a first spell training in Warwickshire he was offered a job as head lad to Andrew Balding at his historic Kingsclere yard when the stable stars were Dream Eater and Side Glance.
Matt Chapman's TV tips
1.50 Sandown – Shamshon: ‘Has a good draw and only 2lb higher than his last winning mark’
2.10 Chester – Who Dares Wins: ‘Should make the frame after his last run’
2.25 Sandown – Masar: ‘Should take all the beating after Royal Ascot third’
2.45 Chester – Intransigent: ‘Goes well here and has a good draw’
3.00 Sandown – Intimation: ‘Cracking run last time and has Ryan Moore up’
3.15 Beverley – Line Of Reason: ‘Decent price and has a decent draw’
3.35 Sandown – Master Carpenter: ‘Classy horse on his day and been dropped in the handicap’
But Appleby missed going racing and became ‘sour’. It was then he jetted out to Ibiza to help his dad run his bars.
It wasn’t long before he was lured back into racing to be private trainer to Colin Rogers near Cirencester.
His first runner Cotswold Village won at Chepstow at 66-1. The following day Seneschal struck at Brighton at 50-1.
After a falling out Appleby headed back north to a yard near Nottingham.
He added: “We had about a dozen horses there and we started getting a few winners. I went to the sales and bought Art Scholar, Lockintanks, The Lock Master – he’s won 18 times for us.
“It just went from there and within six months we’d outgrown the place. That’s when I found the place up at Danethorpe near Newark.”
But keen to get his own yard he finally settled on Langham Racing Stables in Rutland.
Appleby confirmed: “I won’t be going nowhere else now.”
Figuratively, of course, he’s going places fast.