Flag of uncertainty over Warren Place

THE CECIL/SHEIKH MOHAMMED SPLIT: End of an era for a yard once tied to triumphs in maroon and white; Greg Wood on Henry Cecil's career and prospects after losing a fifth of his string

When Sheikh Mohammed began to send his most promising horses to winter in Dubai, his endeavour provoked enough mistaken predictions to keep a bookmaker in profit for years. Some wrote it off as a rich man's folly, others, just as misguided, predicted that Newmarket would soon be a ghost town. No-one, though, would have thought that the Dubai experiment would precipitate an end to the 14-year relationship between the Sheikh, the world's leading racehorse owner, and Henry Cecil, Britain's pre-eminent trainer for two decades.

For Cecil, it is not just a question of numbers, even though he has lost 40 horses, 20 per cent of his string. After all, there will be no shortage of owners who wish to stable their horses at Warren Place. Future biographers, though, will see the dissolution of his partnership with the Sheikh as a defining moment in his so far brilliant career.

It marks, quite simply, the end of an era. During the glory days at Warren Place, the seasons in the 1980s and early 1990s when the family standard which flies to mark a Group One success barely left the flagpole, there were several key figures at Cecil's yard. Sheikh Mohammed supplied the ammunition - Oh So Sharp, Diminuendo, Indian Skimmer, Old Vic, Belmez; Julie, his first wife, and Paddy Rudkin, an exceptional head lad, played vital roles in the preparation and Steve Cauthen punched them home with panache. The Sheikh is the last of them to leave. The question now is whether he has also turned out the lights.

With Khalid Abdullah still strongly represented, and continued support too from the old-school owner-breeders such as Lord Howard de Walden who originally launched his career, Cecil will still have a string of considerable strength. Abdullah's breeding operation provided him with a Derby winner, Commander In Chief, two seasons ago, and the Sussex Stakes winner, Distant View, last year.

In any case, Cecil had long since slipped from the top of the Sheikh's pecking order. John Gosden returned from California in 1988 to train more than 100 horses who carry the maroon and white silks; Andre Fabre, at Chantilly, prepares almost twice as many runners for the Sheikh as Cecil; David Loder, Newmarket's finest young talent, was enjoying his patronage almost before the ink had dried on his licence. Loder, perhaps significantly, is seen very much as a team player, the industrious, selfless midfielder in Mohammed United.

Loder, certainly, would see the removal of his best two-year-olds to the Godolphin operation for their Classic season as the owner's business, and possibly as a mark of his own success. Cecil works to older - some would say outdated - rules of ownership and honour. Classic Cliche, Vettori and Moonshell were all Warren Place juveniles in 1994 who won Classics for Godolphin this year. Cecil felt their loss personally, and, rather unwisely, allowed his reservations to become public.

For the Maktoums too have a powerful sense of honour. It extends - particularly in the case of Hamdan al Maktoum, Sheikh Mohammed's brother - to continued patronage of trainers with a long history of painfully limited success. But public criticism - however veiled - from an employee crosses their line in the sand. Cecil, somewhat unusually, had long been the only leading trainer to work for just one member of the family. Any remote chance of extending his client list among the brothers and any fellow natives of Dubai has now evaporated.

Twenty years is a long time at the top. Henry Cecil got there with a mixture of good fortune - his mother married the Queen's trainer, Sir Cecil Boyd-Rochfort, while Julie, his own first wife, was the daughter of Noel Murless, the previous master of Warren Place, - and outstanding talent.

Even before yesterday's announcement, though, his career was showing signs of wear. In the 1980s, a one-in-three strike rate and 120 or so winners in a season were almost the acceptable minimum. Now, the percentage is barely one in five, and he has not reached three figures since 1992.

A second marriage, a new child - amateur psychologists in Newmarket's saloon bars will find many reasons for the waning of Cecil's star. But for two decades, he was the guv'nor. If he is now slipping towards the bottom of the first division, perhaps even the top of the second, he can still reflect that in his own lifetime at least, there will be no one to match him.

CECIL FACTFILE

Name: Henry Richard Amherst Cecil

Born: 11 January, 1943

Married: 18 October 1966 to Julie (two children, Katie and Noel); 14 February 1991 to Natalie (one son, Jake).

First trainer's licence: 1969 (Assistant trainer to Sir Cecil Boyd-Rochfort 1964 - 1968).

Champion trainer: 1976, 1978, 1979, 1982, 1984, 1985, 1987, 1988, 1990, 1993.

Winning totals 1969 to 1995: 27, 35, 53, 51, 39, 50, 82, 52, 74, 109, 128, 84, 107, 111, 92, 108, 132, 115, 180, 112, 117, 111, 118, 109, 94, 76, 65 (to date).

Big winners trained for Sheikh Mohammed: Oh So Sharp (1985 1,000 Guineas, Oaks: St Leger); Diminuendo (1988 Oaks, Irish Oaks, Yorkshire Oaks); Old Vic (1989 Prix du Jockey-Club, Irish Derby); Alydaress (1989 Irish Oaks); Indian Skimmer (1987 Prix de Diane, 1988 Champion Stakes, 1989 Prix d'Ispahan); Salse (1988 Prix de la Foret); Belmez (1990 King George VI And Queen Elizabeth Stakes); Kissing Cousin (1994 Coronation Stakes); King's Theatre (1994 King George VI And Queen Elizabeth Stakes).