IS it absurd to suggest that a trainer as young as George Scott is enjoying a renaissance?

It sounds ridiculous to propose that a man who did not taste his initial Group 1 victory until 10 months ago has bounced back from the verge of failure.

Yet these are the facts: in 2018, the 29-year-old Scott seemed to have the world at his feet. Five years on from being called back from America upon the death of Sir Henry Cecil to act as assistant to his widow, Lady Jane, he was widely acknowledged as having played a key role in the development of her triple Group 1 winner, Noble Mission.

Upon her retirement in late 2015, Scott had gone it alone and, much thanks to the family horses provided by his wife, Polly, daughter of Stetchworth Stud owner Bill Gredley, he had enjoyed remarkable success in his first two full seasons with a licence, the Gredley home-bred James Garfield providing him with breakthrough triumphs in both the Mill Reef Stakes and the Greenham Stakes. Everything that he touched turned to gold.

Then came the fall. His marriage disintegrated, the Gredley horses were removed, his string was reduced in size to little more than a couple of dozen and a six-year drought without a single pattern race success was endured, all this while he was determinedly endeavouring to be the best father possible to three young children.

Things got so bad that he had long conversations with his father, Simon, enquiring if he could supplement his income by becoming part of the sales force in Simon’s portable office hire company.

For the better

From that nadir, things have taken a considerable turn for the better, much thanks to the support of his family, friends and some talented and loyal staff, not least his assistant and secretary, Alex Mant, and also thanks to Scott hooking up with the Bahraini prince Sheikh Nasser Bin Hamad Al Khalifa and his burgeoning Victorious Forever ownership operation.

Scott’s Eve Lodge Stables, on the Hamilton Road, close to the Rowley Mile Racecourse in Newmarket, are now full to bursting and house not one, but two, dual Group 1 winners in the shape of Bay City Roller and Caballo De Mar, both owned by Victorious Forever.

My visit to Eve Lodge left me with the impression that its hard-working, ambitious proprietor, while single-minded on continuing to progress his career, had come to the realisation that he was blessed to be living out his dream and was resolved to make the most of the good times, because life’s harvest was not always going to be so bountiful.

You could offer me five million quid cash a year to do something else and I would say no

Asked if he is proud of his own bouncebackability, he replies: “I struggle to use the word proud about myself, but I’m very happy, very content. I feel the best version of myself sat here right now, the happiest I’ve ever been.

“Standing in the winner’s enclosure after James Garfield had won the Greenham, I was probably pretty naive to the whole thing at that point. I know I owe a lot to other people, I’ve had fantastic people around me. I’m a dad and I think that I’m a good dad and I’d work at that every day to try to be a really good dad like my dad is to me.”

Winning and losing

“Honestly, and I know everyone says it, but I love training racehorses. You could offer me five million quid cash a year to do something else and I would say no, I love my job. I’m a morning person. I roar out of bed every morning. Always beat my alarm. I love the winning and the losing. I love the process and the torture of losing.

“And I also really enjoy people, all sorts of people. Everyone. I enjoy my staff and I love talking to the owners. And it fits very well with the children, you know it’s a job that you have pockets of time to devote to them.”

Assessing how the current season is panning out, he is a master of understatement. “I think it’s going quite well,” he replies. “There are still a lot of holes that need blocking and little mistakes that you make along the way.

“We’ve left a couple of races on the table. But I feel like we’ve got a good team of people here and we’re really just trying to build a foundation for the future, trying to continue to climb the ladder.

“But when I close my eyes at night, I don’t think ‘this is going so well’. Instead, I think I left this or that race on the table or this horse needs a tongue tie. It just never stops.

“But I think it’s really important, especially having young children, to enjoy these good moments. And, sat here now, my kids are all healthy. They’ve been riding at Hickstead all week. At some point, it’s going to be a lot worse. So I’m enjoying it and soaking it up a little bit. There have been some times, which have not been very easy and they weren’t that long ago.”

Phenomenal human

“And I really have to mention Sheikh Nasser here. He’s just the easiest man in the world. He’s a phenomenal human being, he’s the kindest, most straightforward guy. I don’t disagree with him. We never argue. We never have.

“He’s very level and I’ve never known him in a bad mood. There’s no point in trying to skirt around it, he’s completely rejuvenated my career.

“Which is not to say that I’m his private trainer like lots of people seem to think - he accounts for over a third of my string, but I train for plenty of other people too. I suppose what he’s really done is he’s allowed me a platform to showcase myself again.”

George Scott at Killarney in 2024 after winning with Prydwen and Wayne Hassett win the Kingdom Gold Cup for Keith Breen \ Healy Racing

In between a quick tour of one of his barns, trotting up a couple of his stable stars and consulting with his vets, a smile is rarely off his face and his passion for his profession shines through.

Given that, less than 24 hours earlier, he had endured a deeply frustrating moment when saddling Wimbledon Hawkeye to come from nearly last to finish a never-nearer third behind Hotazhell in a slowly-run Group 1 Bayersiches Zuchtrennen in Germany, his sunny disposition is admirable.

His account of his visit to Munich shows both his positive mindset and his self awareness. “It just didn’t happen for us,” he concedes. “The plan was to be handy but, if you watch the replay, please tell me what Oisin [Murphy, rider of Wimbledon Hawkeye] could have done differently? I always just want the horses to relax and find a rhythm and he relaxed and found a rhythm.

“It was a perfect storm. I mean, the front two walked the dog. We would quite possibly have won by three lengths if we were in any other position. I think back a few years and I’d have really struggled to deal with something like that.”

Now Wimbledon Hawkeye, who was having his first run for Scott after moving a couple of hundred yards down Hamilton Road from the James Owen yard, is set to go for the Group 3 Prix Gontaut-Biron at Deauville in a fortnight’s time before heading towards his main target, the newly-upgraded Group 1 Bahrain International Trophy on November 13th.

Eve Lodge has a very compact layout, something that Scott feels helps instill team spirit. “We’re like an American-style barn, we’re all on top of each other, which I love,” he explains. “I’m in my office in five steps, then I’m back in the barn. I can see everything and I think it pulls everyone together. So I’m really keen not to get any bigger, I don’t want the dynamic of the yard to change.”

Stronger, not bigger

“We’re at a good number. We’re on about 90 horses and we’ll probably take it up to 99 through the winter. But I don’t have any aspirations to grow any bigger right now. We want to get stronger, not bigger.”

Bay City Roller and Oisin Murphy win Epsom's Group 1 Coolmore Coronation Cup \ Healy Racing

Our conversation in his trophy-laden owners’ lounge takes place to the soundtrack of knocking and bumping as Bay City Roller is, as usual, exploring all four corners of his box as he keeps a close eye on daily proceedings from the other side of a partition wall.

“He’s just full of life and happiness,” Scott says. “I can always hear him banging on the wall from my office. Just playing, but he’s always up to something. He likes to have his head out of the window. He likes to be keeping an eye on everyone here and it’s nice to be able to hear him.”

Had the dry summer relented, Bay City Roller would have taken part in the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes at Ascot two days earlier. How did his trainer feel watching on, as Kalpana held off challengers from France and Ireland?

“Delighted that we didn’t have enough rain for us to come into the conversation,” Scott insists. “I didn’t really want to keep him in it right up until declaration time, but there were a couple of threats of some rain.

“We’ll meet those horses later in the year and look forward to it. But I was training him for the race, I had him ready for it. Now he’s having 10 days off.

“There’s a big chance that he could go to the Irish Champion Stakes next, it’s a phenomenal race. It’s either that or the Prix Foy, both races are very much on the agenda. If we had soft ground at both places, we would go to Ireland.

“He’s proven himself at a mile and a half at the very highest level and it would be quite something if we could nail one over shorter with him before heading back to a mile and a half for the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe.

“It’s very hard to make plans after an Arc, but he would definitely either be going to Keeneland [for the Breeders’ Cup Turf] or Champions Day at Ascot, because he just thrives on racing. He’s having the summer off, so he will be able to go bang, bang, bang without question. Last year, his best run was in Munich and he’d had four runs on the spin at that point.

“He’s a freak on soft ground. It’s just the mechanics of his action, he’s so economical. But we are conscious that he’s going to stand at stud somewhere and we don’t want him pencilled in as a mudlark, because he’s not. He’s got a profile which proves that he’s capable of performing at a very high level on any ground.

“He’s shown his versatility, and I would put that down to his will, his desire to race, run and compete. He’ll run on anything - he’d even run down a road for you.

“He’s a very sound horse. He’s also got the best mind and the best constitution. He’s veryeasy apart from one little thing - he’s naughty in his box, you can’t catch him sometimes, you have to have a head collar on him at all times, so that you can catch him.

“He is a Group 2 winner on fast ground as a two-year-old. And he placed in the Tattersalls Gold Cup on quicker than good ground. But it’s clear that he handles testing ground exceptionally well, as the twice that he’s got on it, he has been head and shoulders above everything else around him.”

Caballo De Mar is also having a break at present, but is not too far off a run after coasting home in last place having tried to help force the pace in the Gold Cup.

Hard race

“Everyone saw that he had a desperately hard race at Ascot,” Scott asserts. “I don’t think anyone will ever know exactly what happened, but I’ve got a few ideas. One would be that he took more out of himself in France [when landing the Group 1 Prix Vicomtesse Vigier] than we anticipated and went to the Gold Cup not as fresh as I’d have liked. He was very quiet saddling.

“And Oisin was concerned about the draw from the outset. By the time he came to gallop past the stands the first time, I said to Billy [Jackson-Stops, Victorious Forever’s racing manager]: ‘we’re finished’. The gap never came, he couldn’t get in to the rail and it was like a marathon runner doing his first two miles 60% faster than he wants to run.”

Picked up for just €33,000 at the Tattersalls Ireland September Yearling Sale, Caballo De Mar initially ran for Blue Starr Racing and only switched to Sheikh Nasser’s red and white silks after he had won six handicaps, mainly on the all-weather and starting off a mark of just 64.

“I love Caballo De Mar to bits,” Scott says. “He has given us an amazing last 10 months or so and he’s still got plenty of running left in those legs. I was very keen to miss Goodwood, because I just did not see the value in going back against Scandinavia and Trawlerman.

Opportunities

“If we’re clever, we should be able to pick our way around those horses. So the plan is to go to York [for the Lonsdale Cup] and then back for the Doncaster Cup, which will be perfect for him. There’s still going to be opportunities for him and then he’ll go back to Meydan in the winter. I’m going to have a stable of 20 boxes over there.”

Things are looking good for the Eve Lodge team and classy new recruits are continuing to walk through the gates, not just Wimbledon Hawkeye, but the likes of the Ebor Handicap ante-post favourite, Gamrai, another Victorious Forever acquisition, this time from John and Thady Gosden, and Ridari, a former Aga Khan horse who landed a Group 2 in France last autumn and, by way of an unsuccessful stint in America, has just arrived to race in the silks of Amo and Resolute Racing.

Scott also picks out the juvenile filly Efsixteen, who has been off the track since a winning debut on the 1000 Guineas undercard, and the four-year-old Forty Years On, who is ‘as good a soft ground filly as I’ve ever trained’ according to her handler.

Scott began the ongoing Qatar Goodwood Festival in perfect style, winning the opening race of the meeting, a valuable mile-and-two-furlong handicap, with Al Aaali. So what chance of him ending it on a high with West Acre in this afternoon’s Stewards Cup?

“He’s an exceptionally talented horse on his day, who comes with his quirks and he’s let us down a couple of times, but he’s trained very well into this,” is Scott’s honest assessment. “I’ve been more confident about other horses, but I don’t think you can ever be confident with West Acre. One day he will win a big race again, but I don’t know when that is.”