Dick Hern - inducted into Hall of Fame

Enable and Major Dick Hern inducted into British Racing Hall of Fame

By Sporting Life

Horse Racing

Wed October 01, 2025 · 3M ago

The British Racing Hall of Fame will have two new members on QIPCO British Champions Day as Enable and Major Dick Hern join as the latest inductees.

The legendary Enable is best remembered for her sustained brilliance over five seasons in training which included 11 Group 1 victories across four different countries.

Owned by the late Prince Khalid Abdullah’s Juddmonte Farms and trained by John Gosden, the daughter of Nathaniel won 15 of her 19 races between 2016 and 2020, with the majority being achieved at the highest level. The bay filly, a Juddmonte Farms homebred, made history by becoming the first horse to win the King George VI & Queen Elizabeth Stakes at Ascot three times. She is also one of only eight horses to gain two triumphs in the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe while victory in the 2018 Breeders’ Cup Turf at Churchill Downs cemented her international reputation.

Enable now forms part of Juddmonte’s impressive breeding operation as a broodmare at Banstead Manor in Newmarket.

Enable wins her third King George under Frankie Dettori

John Gosden, who trained Enable throughout her career, said: “I’ve never known a filly like her that could take the training and the racing. She probably did something that may never be done again as a three-year-old to go and win the Oaks, then the Irish Oaks followed by the King George, then to York to win the Yorkshire Oaks and then dust them all off in the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe.

"I don’t know if I’ll ever be lucky enough to see another filly who could do something like that. She was without doubt one of those absolute racemares of a lifetime.”

Major Dick Hern was one of the outstanding trainers in the second half of the 20th century, scooping 16 British Classics and guiding the careers of multiple champions. Hern died in Oxford at the age of 81 in May 2002, but his legacy lives on and he will be posthumously inducted into the British Racing Hall of Fame.

William Richard Hern was born in Holford, Somerset, on January 20, 1921, and spent his early adult years serving in the army in North Africa and Italy, becoming widely known as “The Major” from then on.

Hern was Champion Trainer on four occasions, in 1962, 1972, 1980 and 1983, and his British Classic triumphs included three Derby winners in Troy (1979), Henbit (1980) and Nashwan (1989). He also became the first trainer to saddle five winners of the King George VI & Queen Elizabeth Stakes at Ascot, plus won every Irish Classic at least once.

Dayjur blitzes his rivals at York

He trained none faster than Dayjur, who lit up the 1990 season with his electrifying pace. The colt reeled off successive victories in the Temple Stakes, King’s Stand, Nunthorpe, Sprint Cup and Prix de l’Abbaye before an agonising defeat in the Breeders’ Cup Sprint at Belmont when he had glory in his grasp only to jump a shadow in the final strides - he was beaten by a neck.

Hern becomes the fifth trainer to be inducted into the Hall of Fame after Vincent O’Brien, Sir Henry Cecil, Sir Michael Stoute and Aidan O’Brien.

Brough Scott, a British Racing Hall of Fame panel member, has narrated a special video to celebrate the achievements of a very special trainer. He said, “A great trainer, and a great man, Dick Hern is the most deserved of entries to the Hall of Fame. He was a champion; champion trainer, handler of the greatest of horses, and a champion in life itself.

“Of all his achievements, nothing can match what Dick did with Nashwan in the summer of 1989. By then paralysed from a hunting fall, he had to use his eyes, not his hands, to feel for fitness and at Newmarket and then at Epsom, Nashwan was a training masterpiece.”

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