'I just love the whole life'

I was talking to a friend of mine, who has embarked on a career as a sports psychologist, about the mental approach required for sustained success and we came on to the subject of racehorse trainers.

They may not be actual sportsmen and women in that they don't compete themselves, but like football managers, they suffer the stress of watching others defend or destroy their hard work.

Along with staffing problems, injuries to horses, diplomatic qualities when dealing with tricky owners and economic skills to keep business afloat, trainers have to rely on the vagaries of the equine athlete to prove his or her worth. The pressure can become too much and when things begin to go wrong, they start to hate the very thing to which they have dedicated their lives.

The main problem is that the trainer becomes distracted by all the other elements of his business and gets too far removed from the actual training of racehorses. They may not lose their ability to get horses fit and to place them in the right races, but if their attitude changes and their confidence is dented, they can lose their way.

Some big names - Henry Cecil being a prime example - have crashed from the heights of glorious invincibility to relative obscurity, as no amount of winners in one season can guarantee success the next.

Against this backdrop, a few remain happy, shining models of consistency. If there was an annual prize for the most optimistic trainer in racing, it would be won by Clive Brittain. He never, ever thinks that a horse of his might be outclassed and consequently has made a habit of sending out horses at huge prices to be placed in the most high-profile races.

Terimon, at 500-1, was second in the Derby in 1989 to Nashwan and it seems that the bookies and the punters have never learned to give a Clive Brittain runner the respect it deserves. Only last weekend his horse Kandidate finished third in the 2,000 Guineas at 100-1. Last week, Hattan won the Chester Vase, beating a horse of Aidan O'Brien's called Almighty.

Hattan is still 33-1 to win the Derby, despite the fact he was toying with his opponents.

'I train the horses, not their prices,' Brittain says, 'But I do think it's crazy. The bookies get this stupid idea I just run them for the sake of it and ignore the fact that they're good horses. It all goes back to the Terimon days. He was a good horse and I told Lady Beaverbrook, his owner, that he was a good horse. He should never have started at 500-1. That just makes it look embarrassing.

'It doesn't really bother me, but sometimes it's difficult to get a jockey to ride a 100-1 shot and it can be hard to persuade an owner to run them when they're that price.'

At the age of 71, Brittain is at the upper end of the seniority scale, but has the energy of a man less than half his age. Having worked for 23 years as groom for Sir Noel Murless, he set up as a trainer in 1972. He was already married to Murless's secretary, Maureen, who soon moved over to be full-time secretary to her husband. She still works in the office, walks round the horses at night and goes racing with Clive. They are a team.

Four years ago, Brittain had an uncharacteristically bad season. He did not win a Group 1 race, a rare occurrence in the last 30 years, his numbers were dwindling and the winners were drying up. It boiled down to the trainer himself, who was desperately lame with a hip that had worn out. He was in pain and it permeated his working life. An operation in the winter of 2002 saw him bounce back to fitness and success.

The dual Coronation Cup winner Warrsan did plenty to rekindle the Brittain belief and was a typical example of Brittain's ability to bring out the best in difficult horses. Warrsan had been trained with over 100 other two-year-olds at Evry racecourse in France and had, to put it in human terms, lost his identity. A regular supply of Polo mints and a great deal of affection helped him become a more confident animal and gradually, a staggeringly successful racehorse who has won more than £1.2million in prize money.

Willie Carson, a long-time friend of Brittain, said, 'He has the most unbelievable feel for horses. He can produce them to be at their peak on the big day and he's always in tune with them.

'He's got the equivalent of a gardener's green fingers, he can just feel it. He may have always talked his horses up, but in return his horses have always talked for him.'

I remember Brittain once telling me that during his years in racing, he had learnt the golden rule: 'You don't win by taking, you win by giving. I never give up with horses because you don't have to beat them, you just have to outwit them.'

Brittain is renowned for his early starts in Newmarket, rising at 3.30am to put the horses on the 'walker' - a circular mechanical device that can walk up to eight horses at a time - before his staff come into work at 5.15am.

'I wouldn't ask anyone else to get up that early if I wasn't prepared to do it myself,' he explains. 'I have a nap at midday and if I'm driving to the races and I get tired, Maureen and I swap and I have a sleep.

'In the evening, we walk round the yard between 10 and 10.30 and give all the horses a Polo. It's a good time to check them in case anything is coming down with colic and if all is well, we go to bed. That's our routine.'

Then the alarm goes off in the middle of the night and it's off to work again. Brittain still rides out himself, particularly if there is an awkward horse who needs special attention.

'I just love the whole life,' he tells me, 'the riding out, the craic with the lads. There's always something happening.

'Things happen that can be very painful. We had to have Membership [a winner at Royal Ascot at 20-1 in 2003] put down the other day and it was awful, but the horse was suffering and it was the best thing for him. You have to take responsibility for those decisions and you have to do the right thing.

'But when today's over, it's tomorrow I'm thinking of. I'll always be positive about the next day. I laugh and I dance when I win, but you'll never see me cry if I lose. That's why I've lasted so long.'

Thoughts of slipping into a quiet retirement are far from Brittain's mind. He doesn't even like going on holiday because it's not as much fun as being at home with his horses and his dogs.

'The only reason I would retire is if Maureen didn't want to carry on,' he says, 'We're a partnership and have been for 40 years. We're working harder now than we ever did and there are so many races still to be won.'

One such race is the Derby in a month's time. He has six entries, including Hattan, from whom he feels there is much improvement still to come, Kandidate and multiple winner Party Boss, who finished a close-up fifth in yesterday's Lingfield Derby Trial.

He has six fillies entered in the Oaks and Warrsan goes again in the Coronation Cup on the day before the Derby. Brittain's hopes are high and the prices are long. But then again, they always are.