Major Dick Hern

Brilliant racehorse trainer to the Queen

William Richard Hern, racehorse trainer and army officer: born Holford, Somerset 20 January 1921; CVO 1980; CBE 1998; married 1956 Sheilah Davis (died 1998); died Oxford 22 May 2002.

Dick Hern, an uncompromising military man, became in March 1989 an unlikely underdog. It was not a role which suited him. In one of the most outrage-inducing decisions in the history of racing, Hern was sacked by the Queen as trainer at her West Ilsley stables in Berkshire, where he had been since 1963. The story was given front-page headlines.

Hern had been largely confined to a wheelchair since a hunting accident in 1984. He was a brilliant trainer who had won 15 British Classics as well as many abroad, but he was also a traditionalist who never publicised the affairs of his stable; a private man in a public business.

After a string of protests against Hern's eviction, with criticism on the whole directed at the Queen's racing manager, Lord Carnarvon, a compromise of sorts was reached. Hern was allowed to stay at West Ilsley for an extra year, sharing the stables with his successor Lord Huntingdon.

This was far from the end of Hern's training career. There were unimaginable glories still to be celebrated, which allowed Hern to be remembered as he should be: not as a wheelchair-bound pawn in a media war of words, but quite simply as an exceptional racehorse trainer.

Like nearly all masters of his profession, Hern was a natural horseman. "I cannot remember being unable to ride," he once said. His roots were with Somerset's hunting fraternity, and he also a keen point-to-point rider and amateur jockey.

During the Second World War, Hern served with the North Irish Horse in North Africa, where he commanded his own squadron. His regiment spent time in Italy where he and his friend Michael Pope showed not only their love of racing, but also a fair amount of resourcefulness in setting up race meetings at Ravenna's disused trotting track.

After the North Irish Horse was demobilised in 1946, Hern joined the well-known Porlock riding school in Somerset, graduating to chief instructor. He coached the British show jumping team for the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki.

Hern then linked up again with Pope, who had set up as a trainer, to work as his assistant for five years. Pope's operation was a small one, but from there Hern successfully applied for the job as private trainer to Lionel Holliday, one of the most difficult men in the game. When he set up at the Lagrange stables in Newmarket in 1957, Hern was asked by the leading trainer Ryan Jarvis if he had brought a toothbrush, as it was all he would need. But Hern proved a success, winning the first of 184 races with the first horse he saddled for Holliday.

During this time, Hern nearly won the Derby. Hethersett started favourite for the race in 1962, but was one of seven horses brought down going down Tattenham Corner when travelling well. Compensation was close at hand, though, when the colt won the St Leger, allowing Hern to pick up the first of his four trainers' championships.

A year later, Hern moved to the West Ilsley stables in Berkshire to train for its new owner, John Astor. The staff he inherited included the stable jockey Joe Mercer and key lads such as Buster Haslam, who was Hern's head lad until he committed suicide in 1990. The team at West Ilsley was knowledgeable, close-knit and always invaluable.

Hern made a bright start to his career with Astor and achieved a rare double in 1965 when Provoke won the St Leger and Craghouse the Irish equivalent. There then followed three miserable years when the stable suffered a virus, but two major boosts came, with the announcement that Hern was to train for the Queen and the arrival of a good-looking colt by Queen's Hussar, Brigadier Gerard.

If he was top class at two, Brigadier Gerard was brilliant at three. His best performance that year may have been his first, when beating Mill Reef, the subsequent Derby winner, and My Swallow in the 1971 2,000 Guineas. In three seasons' racing, he suffered only one defeat from 18 starts, despite winning the best races in Britain from a mile to a mile-and-a-half, bar the Derby, for which his owner/breeder John Hislop considered him unsuitable.

Hern had an outrageous hand of top middle-distance horses in the 1970s and 1980s, and next along was the Queen's Highclere, who won the 1,000 Guineas and French Oaks. The same season, 1974, Bustino won the St Leger for Lady Beaverbrook.

In 1976 Mercer was sacked as first jockey at West Ilsley by the stable's new owners Sir Michael Sobell and Lord Weinstock. He was replaced by Willie Carson, but there was outrage at Mercer's treatment. Some felt that Hern should have resigned in protest, but such an action would have been crazy considering that he could not on his own match the wealth of talent in yard. That fact was quickly demonstrated in Jubilee Year, 1977, when Dunfermline and Carson won the Oaks and the St Leger for the delighted monarch.

Then, two years later, Hern won his first Derby with the Sobell and Weinstock-owned Troy (who also won the Irish Derby and King George), under a fine, patient ride from Carson. The trainer and jockey won the Derby 12 months later with Henbit, and also took the Oaks with Bireme. The 1980 season also saw Hern win the King George again with Ela-Mana-Mou. The following year Hern won his fifth St Leger with Cut Above. Number six was to come two seasons later with the filly Sun Princess, who had also won the Oaks by 12 lengths, the first maiden to win a Classic since 1950.

In 1984, a hunting accident left Hern paralysed from the waist down. He then broke his thigh while exercising on a wooden horse and in 1988 had to undergo heart surgery. While he was recuperating, the yard was taken over by his new assistant Neil Graham. But Hern, typically, had no thoughts of retirement. His training methods changed, though, and as Lord Carnarvon said, "Dick's eyes have become his hands." Although he found it a humbling experience, Hern's accident in many ways made him more accessible. His vulnerability increased the outrage when the Queen decided not to renew his lease at West Ilsley in 1989.

Hern's nemesis came in the form of a powerful, panther-like colt called Nashwan. After two successful starts as a two-year-old, he set racing alight at three in 1989, winning the 2,000 Guineas on his seasonal début before pulverising his field in the Derby. To those Classic victories he added the Eclipse Stakes and the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Diamond Stakes the premier all-aged British races.

Ironically Nashwan's owner, Sheikh Hamdan Al-Maktoum, had bought privately Nashwan's dam, Height of Fashion, from her owner breeder, the Queen. The racing public was upset when Nashwan bypassed the St Leger, thereby missing the opportunity to become the first Triple Crown winner since Nijinsky in 1970 and his career ended ignominiously with defeat at Longchamp in a "prep" race for the Arc de Triomphe.

As a demonstration of gratitude for the training of Nashwan, Sheikh Hamdan bought the Kingwood stables in Lambourn and renovated them massively for Hern to train from. The two enjoyed great success together, and the sprinter Dayjur proved perhaps more brilliant in his field than Nashwan had done over middle-distances. A great moment, when Dayjur looked sure to win the Breeders' Cup Sprint on the unfamiliar American dirt surface, ended dramatically when he hurdled a shadow near the Churchill Downs finishing line and narrowly lost the race to the mare Safely Kept. Dayjur was the last in a long line of great horses Hern trained. In 1997 he announced his retirement.

Hern, "The Major" as he was widely known, aroused huge respect, if not always affection, in those who knew him. Willie Carson once said: "The Major is a 1930s man. It's all about discipline and loyalty and getting on with the job. He's got everyone doing what he wants and he doesn't have to keep telling them."

Richard Griffiths