King glad not to be seen just as a jumps man now

ALAN KING is now well established as the finest dual-purpose trainer in Britain – but there was a time when being beaten by one of his runners on the Flat was not so readily accepted by one of the elder statesmen of the training fraternity.

Interviewed for the Big Read in tomorrow’s Racing Post, King recalled with glee the moment in August 2002 when his two-yearold Salsalino edged out Mick Channon’s Sheriff Saint in a maiden. To compound Channon’s frustration, his inaptly named Good Loser was then beaten into second by Philip Hobbs’s Potwash half an hour later.

King revealed: “Mick walked into the bar afterwards and said, ‘I’ve come to Salisbury and it’s turned into a f ****** jumps meeting’.”

The Barbury Castle trainer’s early forays into the Flat did not go far, with the likes of My Way De Solzen, Voy Por Ustedes and Katchit ensuring the jumps took over completely, but the tide has turned since then, with his first Group 1 successes this year courtesy of Trueshan complementing his 31 Grade 1 wins over jumps and ensuring he already has one eye on the summer even in December.

“We had a few Flat horses,” he said, “but then the jumping went completely crazy and I stopped with the Flat for a bit, which I do regret, but in the last eight or nine years we’ve been building it up again.”

And King’s success under both codes means he is accepted as part of the Flat landscape rather more than in the days of Channon’s verbal volley.

“I’ve been doing it for long enough now that I don’t think I’m looked at as just a jumps trainer now,” he added. “William Haggas is a good mate, so there’s plenty of banter, and Sir Mark [Prescott] always gives me plenty of abuse, but we enjoy that. We’re taking it very seriously and long may it continue.”