Hugo Palmer - has string in outstanding form

Hugo Palmer: Long road to being champion trainer

By David Ord

Horse Racing

Mon August 04, 2025 · 5M ago

Hugo Palmer isn’t convinced that Michael Owen’s dream of turning his retained handler into a champion trainer is a realistic short-term proposition, but he’s excited by the thought of it.

The Manor House Stables team have been in brilliant form of late, winning Group races with Fitzella and Cheshire Dancer at Ascot and Seagulls Eleven at Goodwood

Then on Sunday Roman Dragon took the mantle of being the winning most horse at Chester by landing the Queensferry Stakes. When asked about Owen’s comments, Palmer told Monday’s Nick Luck Daily Podcast: “It’s a nice thing to say but what’s the expression, ‘you’ve never seen a paper refuse ink!’. We’ve got 110 stables here which is a long way adrift of where you’d need to be to start dreaming of being champion trainer.

“It would be lovely one day but principally the reason I’d like to be champion trainer is to do so you have to win a very large amount of very, very top races, and that’s what I’d really like to do more than anything.

“If that meant that one day we were on top of the pile then of course that would be very exciting but the mechanism for getting there, winning multiple Group Ones, is what I’d be keener on doing.

“If winning multiple Group Ones found ourselves in the top ten in the trainers’ table, which I’ve only managed to do once, then that would be equally as satisfying. You wouldn’t find me moaning about not being champion if I was winning multiple Group Ones.”

One horse who might look to strike at the highest level this term is Fitzella with the Palmer considering his options with her.

“At the moment I’m thinking the Prix Du Calvados in Deauville for her. I’d only be nervous about the ground, and it is very difficult to gauge the ground in France because they have a different system for calling it. It’s on a slightly different scale.

“To travel over there and find its soft ground would be nerve-wracking but that’s where I’d like to go, it’s a valuable Group Two and we could think from there.

“She’s in the Moyglare which is a nice gap again, three weeks to that, I won’t be putting here in the Fillies’ Mile, but I will probably put her in the Cheveley Park. I’d like to think she’ll get a mile next year, I’d like to think we can dream about her being a Guineas filly.

“We’d have the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies over a mile but a very sharp flat one at mile on our list of possible races. Really, she’ll probably run only twice more this year. Ideally, I think we’d like to achieve enough this year that she can start off in the Guineas next year and not have to trial first.”

Hugo Palmer: Long road to being champion trainer

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