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The Idol Horse team tackles the biggest events on the world horse racing calendar. Expect to hear interviews from the biggest names in the sport and insight, breaking news and forthright opinion from the Idol Horse team.
# Idol Horse Podcast — James Cummings
*Interview by Michael Cox. Brought to you by Keeneland's September Sale.*
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**Intro:** Welcome back to the Idol Horse Podcast. It's good to have you with us. We've got a great guest today — Hong Kong's newest trainer, James Cummings, grandson of the great Bart Cummings, but now blazing his own trail at Sha Tin. This episode is brought to you by Keeneland's September Sale, the world's largest yearling sale, running September 14–26 in Lexington, Kentucky. If you're looking for your next good horse, that's where the world will be.
James was really generous with his time. He has some great stories about working under Bart, his time in Australia, some of the great horses he trained, how he'll handle the challenge of training a Class Five horse in Hong Kong, and some insight into the challenges of his first season. So settle in — here it is, James Cummings on the Idol Horse Podcast.
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**Michael Cox:** Welcome to the Idol Horse Podcast, and a special guest today — Hong Kong's newest horse trainer, James Cummings. Welcome. Newest horse trainer — it must feel like right now, a few days into the off-season, you're Hong Kong's *only* trainer. Everyone else has jetted out to some exotic location around the world. You're hard at work in the Sha Tin stables. Are you the only trainer there at the moment?
**James Cummings:** Thank you, Michael. Well, the tracks are closed, so there's not a lot of venturing outside the stables in the precinct, so I don't know the answer for sure. But to be fair, the others deserve their break — they've been through the season, they've toughed it out, and it's intense. I can see that already. For me, I've got a job to do to get to know my new horses and my new team of staff, and I've got a bit of momentum at the moment, so I'm trying to make the most of that to give myself the best chance in the new season.
**Michael Cox:** A lot of Australians are tuning in to hear your experience. How different is it from what you'd known before — the daily routine in the Hong Kong stables compared to where you were?
**James Cummings:** I was in a unique position, training at two different sites in Sydney as well as a satellite stable in Melbourne. Plenty of trainers in Australia have satellite stables, but travelling back and forth between two stables on a regular basis throughout the week — I can already sense it's going to be incredibly different to that. Having a stable at Sha Tin that's right around the corner from where I live with my family is not to be dismissed as a small detail. That's a huge difference. It's a really interesting "club med" feeling for a horse trainer, going from a lot of hours on the road every day to being on site all the time. I'm enjoying it so far. It's nice to be able to wander around the stables with no time constraints and drift from there to home and back. That's a common theme from expat trainers coming to Hong Kong — they enjoy the lifestyle of training here.
**Michael Cox:** It's a very unique setup. For people who don't know: the vast majority of trainers and jockeys live in a few apartment buildings right on course. How's your experience of that been so far?
**James Cummings:** Really good, because I've got four young children and they can enjoy a safe area with outdoor space in a real metropolis like Hong Kong — the high-rise capital of the world, where you'd think it'd be impossible for a child to run outside in bare feet and play on the swings and the grass. At Sha Tin, three buildings inside a compound — Monica and I call it the village — there's over twenty kids who muck around every day. They can be out the door for hours and only come back when we rustle them up for dinner.
In Sydney these days, for a child to have fun outside you need to book a play date, in one-hour blocks, and it involves driving to a park. It's a really different world to when I grew up. So in the village at the moment that's really easy. It's a bit of a social experiment having everybody in there together, but for us everyone's been really relaxed, kind, warm and welcoming. The cynics in the village say, "Just wait till the season starts" — that might change a bit — but I don't know about that. The camaraderie among the trainers I see is really good. David Hayes has great experience, here on two separate occasions, and he's remarked that the camaraderie among the trainers is actually really healthy — far better than the last time he was here, in his opinion. That's good to hear, and I see it in the jockeys too. Jockeys always get along well wherever I've been, even though they're fiercely competitive — something about being in the room together every meeting, at barrier trials, risking life and limb. It's been good to see the trainers equally see eye to eye and find a way to enjoy an intense season.
**Michael Cox:** I find competition between trainers a really interesting topic. I asked John Size about it recently for a feature — he didn't see himself as in competition with other trainers; you train a horse to do its best, the horse competes against other horses, and you've done your job. But I'm interested in the dynamic for the new trainer coming in. What level of advice, what level of support is there? You're on the leaderboard, you're in competition for horses. Do you ask for advice? Do people give it? Do you trust it?
**James Cummings:** You've got to be pretty cynical, maybe, if you wonder whether someone's telling you the truth when you ask for advice. I have a theory: if you ask someone and they're prepared to answer, most people enjoy being right about things, so they'll give you their honest appraisal if they believe it'll lead to the truth down the track.
So yeah, I've asked for a lot of advice. I've spoken to John, to David, to Caspar. These guys are Hall of Famers in Hong Kong — amazing trainers, horsemen — and the way they run their businesses are all different. Three very different personalities. I read your piece on John Size; I found it really interesting. I've read a lot of your stuff about Hong Kong because it's given me a window into what I'm coming into and what's different here. There are three trainers I've spoken to who've been here before and aren't training here anymore, and even the young trainers — Mark Newham's a pretty young trainer, Jamie Richards, David Eustace — there's an amazing amount of really helpful feedback I've been able to get. Particularly with the expat community, because I naturally gravitate to them, they're helpful; they want to see you do well. And the locals have been really good too — they've jumped out of the ground to wish me well when I've least expected it.
My inaugural trainers' meeting with the Hong Kong Jockey Club was the most fascinating insight into the difference between somewhere like Sydney or Melbourne and Hong Kong. I probably won't go into detail there — it might not be appropriate.
**Michael Cox:** Just to explain — we don't get to go in. I wish I could. I get second-hand accounts. There's robust discussion, ideas put forward, a sharing of ideas. That doesn't happen in Sydney — the trainers don't all get in a room and have a feedback session.
**James Cummings:** What I meant more was that they do — there are trainers' meetings. The meetings at Randwick compared to Warwick Farm are different in their own way, and they're an hour apart geographically. Similarly you could compare the Flemington meetings — small nuanced differences in what they're worried about. Hong Kong's a whole new ball game in the issues and topics that get raised.
**Michael Cox:** Is it the level of detail?
**James Cummings:** I'll share one thing I don't think would be confidential. In Australia, when a trainer starts to struggle, because of the system and the structure — particularly in my grandfather's era — he ends up owning a lot of his own horses. It happened to my grandfather; he ended up owning a few too many, which makes the business hard to run. In Hong Kong, you can't own any of the horses in your care. There are a couple of trainers who really want to. So in Australia you'd worry about owning too many; in Hong Kong the concern is you can't own any. It's a funny topic, but it's a revelation into the different attitude, what's available and how businesses are run. A trainer told me in Hong Kong it's up to you how you run your business — but there are serious physical and operational constraints, and that's one of them. I found that really interesting.
**Michael Cox:** You mentioned three trainers — John Size, Caspar Fownes, David Hayes. You talk about the constraints: everyone has the same facilities, the same number of horses, the same tracks. The system dominates, but they're three trainers of completely different style. Do you have a feel for what type of trainer you want to be?
**James Cummings:** I'm conscious of not coming to Hong Kong expecting to reinvent the wheel — that'd be the first thing. You've got to adapt and use what's available to you. Caspar had really good advice for me, as did all those trainers — not to mention Brett Crawford's insights into his first season, who I consider an excellent trainer, and David Hall, who's been here a long time, had champions back in Australia and made a life of it here. The core philosophy of the way I like to train won't be that different, but I'll be prepared to be open-minded and change where I need to. I've already learnt things about what differences will be important. I've travelled horses around Australia — not internationally, but to Brisbane, Perth, Tasmania — and you need to adapt. I get a call from my assistant: "Boss, I know you want to swim the horse, but there's no pool here, there's a creek." Hong Kong's the whole operation on a greater scale, but at the moment, in my mind, it's not unlike having a satellite or travelling stable — making everything there work to fit the style I'm comfortable with.
**Michael Cox:** I want to step back to growing up in Sydney, around racing. Your kids are going to have a whole different experience, immersed in the sport, surrounded by star jockeys and trainers. You grew up with a lot of expectation. Was there a time when everyone expected you to be a horse trainer?
**James Cummings:** I'm the youngest of four kids, and I just tacked on, like most youngest children do. I followed my siblings around. I joined my cousins on the family property on the outskirts of Sydney at Princes Farm, Castlereagh — my earliest memories of anything to do with horses. I used to love going out there. When I got older I'd venture into the stables. When my father came back from his disqualification he didn't have many staff, so we'd start working there. In all that time I could count on one hand the number of times I went to the races — I just never went. It's not the most fun thing to do as a kid. But I always enjoyed the farm and the stables, and I fell in love with working with horses, the atmosphere of a racing stable, the eclectic array of different people you'd come into contact with. I still love that. I could train horses and never go to the races — but I've grown to love going too, and I really enjoyed this past season in Hong Kong, going every time I could and seeing things from a different perspective. Never once did I walk into the stables thinking, "This is what I'm going to be." I did it because it was natural, something to do.
At one point I was watching track work twenty-six years ago on New Year's Day, when no one else is there — they're more interested in the midnight fireworks and they'd be in bed. I was at track work with my grandfather at Randwick, and it was good fun — the steam coming off the gallops, the busyness of the environment: jockeys, work riders, competing trainers in the trainers' hut. Someone helps make you a hot drink and it's all happening. I've always enjoyed the feeling of getting to know a horse and taking care of it well — a painstaking, slow, patient process, but incredibly rewarding in the long run. He enjoyed having a grandchild who took interest in what he did — he had so many grandchildren he couldn't remember their names, I'm sure of it, but he'd remember the names of the horses as he walked up the row. I'd jump in his Mercedes-Benz and we'd drive to the track at Randwick. He'd drive through the pedestrian walkways, past the garden beds, and park where no one had probably thought to park. He just had that aura — no one was going to stop Bart. You'd walk out onto the track past frame after frame of his past Derby winners, Flight Stakes winners, Doncaster winners. It's hard to compare because it's my only experience, but I have this memory of him being greatly respected and admired. That was really cool to be part of — the best jockeys in Sydney wanting to ride track work for him, good work riders. He loved buying a big, beautiful horse, so he had plenty of them in training. Amazing to watch, and to think back on now in a context you can appreciate more, I find interesting. I could talk about it all day. The best aspect of being a trainer is those moments — the satisfaction of having a really good horse on your hands, bringing a horse through, getting the most out of them, and leading a team to achieve that together.
**Michael Cox:** Does your memory include horses like So You Think? Who are some you remember coming out of track work and going, "Wow, look at that"?
**James Cummings:** A perfect example — the horse you mentioned, and horses like Viewed, Roman Emperor, very good horses coming through the stable. But that's a few years down the track — ten years later, once I was actually doing it as a job. When I finished school I was at university, but I always had my head more entrenched in a form guide than an economics textbook. I couldn't focus enough on that, and I ended up spending time working on a stud farm in the Hunter Valley. But I came back to the stables, because as much as I enjoyed the stud, that wasn't my passion — not day in, day out, not so far removed from the action.
I also had the presence of mind to realise Bart wouldn't be around forever. If I didn't make the time and the effort and ask him — it's not really my style to headhunt for a job — but if I didn't say, "Look, I'd love to come and work for you," it might never have happened. Looking back, I'm glad I did. It was hard at the time when he finally put me on as his foreman, which wasn't his idea, interestingly. He didn't jump at it in the beginning. When I finished on the stud farm I went back and worked for my father — the stables were next door. But Bart's foreman at the time was now-Group One-winning trainer in his own right, John Thompson — an outstanding foreman Bart had every confidence in. He had a good team at Randwick, though there was always a bit of pressure that Group Ones wouldn't come from Sydney, they'd come from Melbourne, because Bart programmed and trained his horses to peak for Melbourne. He had Reg Fleming running Melbourne, who did an unbelievable job. He had John Thompson until John got offered to train privately for Pat Farms. Bart didn't see it coming and didn't have a plan B. He said, "Who's going to replace you?" and John Thompson said, "I think your grandson James would do a good job." He smiled and said, "I'll have to run it past Val." He went home and told my grandmother, and she smiled — she saw a little history repeating. That's how I ended up his foreman, around 2009. A few years later I was assistant trainer with him, one thing led to another, and we were co-trainers on August 1st, 2013.
**Michael Cox:** How did the dynamic change? It must be different, from grandson visiting at track work to assistant trainer in the team.
**James Cummings:** Immensely. At first you're just a curious grandchild, learning as much as you can, asking questions, soaking everything up like a sponge with no pressure. But when you become a manager, a foreman running thirty-two staff — we had seventy-five horses at Randwick, a split stable, some up the hill at the Bobby Thompson stable as well as his main barn of about sixty down at the bottom stables — that came with pressure. Pressure to perform, to get things right, to be across the detail. He set a high bar: if a horse got a temperature, it'd be my fault it had the temperature. That's how high the bar was — some say too much, overboard. It's not my style as a leader, but it did bring out the best in you as a foreman: resolve, resilience, the requirement to think ahead, the urge to get things done today, not put it off to tomorrow, and to get good at giving feedback and communicating. Because you're talking about an octogenarian trainer who's not at the track — he needs good feedback all the time; he needs you to be his eyes and ears. Those are great skills he passed on. And valuably to me, he had to tell me everything — everything he was thinking, everything he'd do, everything he'd learnt before.
**Michael Cox:** It's fascinating. So he's on the phone, a horse with a problem — "Tell me what you can see, touch it here." Is it that kind of thing, eyes, ears and hands? An amazing way to learn.
**James Cummings:** No question could be left unasked; every topic had to be explored. Even when his health was good, he'd come to the stables, but he couldn't come to first lot at half past four — that just wasn't happening. He'd come at half past seven, maybe seven o'clock. He'd see what we were working later in the morning — horses just out of the paddock, yearlings getting educated. He'd get as much of a kick out of coming out. He'd be the doyen of the turf, where John O'Shea or Graham Begg or another trainer might ask his opinion on any topic of the day. He'd encourage them to minimise the swearing — "Stop swearing" was normally the first bit of advice. Someone would make him a cup of tea, normally me. He'd enjoy the banter of the stable, and a chance to make sure what he saw at the end of the morning was a good reflection of what happened earlier — that the team was run the right way, the riders were good, the horses settled, well-muscled, moving freely. So he ran a really successful business even that late in his career without being there all the time, without watching my every move — but he'd question every move.
People would say, "Do you ever do something a bit different, because you think you might do it better than the way Bart tells you? Do you experiment?" I always say no, and it doesn't cross my mind. If I were an eighty-year-old trainer and my grandson was doing my job, I'd want him to do everything I told him. With that ethos, it worked really well. The moment I started for him, So You Think returned as a three-year-old and nearly ran a track record in the Ming Dynasty. He won the Gloaming en route to being luckless in the Guineas, and the VRC committee in their wisdom allowed him into the Cox Plate as a Group Three winner — probably the first three-year-old to get into a Cox Plate as only a Group Three winner — and he won handsomely. He won two of them. Imagine how much you could learn in that environment as a twenty-one-year-old foreman. That's not to mention Viewed and Roman Emperor going about their seasons, Faint Perfume en route to a VRC Oaks, Rock Classic winning an Australian Guineas against the odds — Denman was unbeatable and Bart found a way to beat him — and other good horses like Nechita, his last champion three-year-old as a sole trainer, a quite amazing filly. The good horses teach you a lot about how far you can push a horse and how much you can expect. And what it takes to nurture a good horse to that level, minimising the mistakes that stop them getting there. Soaking up the way Bart approached it, fulfilling the destinies of those horses, was amazing to watch.
**Michael Cox:** Much to ask there — you rattle off some incredible animals. Come back to your grandfather first. Such amazing achievements over a long period. What was his superpower as a trainer? Personality trait, husbandry, planning, competitiveness — what got him all those Melbourne Cups and Group Ones?
**James Cummings:** Good question — and how long do you have? I get asked sometimes what makes a good trainer a good trainer. I'd say this: his confidence was without peer. Regardless of what was happening in his business, with a horse's campaign, or even his relationship with an owner — which could be tumultuous — he'd retain confidence. That's important to dwell on, because it's hard to do, especially in professional sport, where confidence is so important.
I was having an interesting conversation last week, at the final meeting of the season, about the Dunning-Kruger effect — how, as you become more experienced, it's not always the case you stay as confident as when you were young and inexperienced. Ask a room of golfers, half young, half veterans: standing on the first tee at the Open, how confident are you of bombing one right down the middle? Often it's the experienced veterans who are least confident, because they have the experience of all the things that can go wrong; the young guys have the belief in themselves, unfounded because they lack that experience. I'm digressing, but the Dunning-Kruger effect is something I've often thought about with my grandfather. No matter how many trials and tribulations he went through — and he had many — he was always able to maintain supreme confidence in what he was doing. That's an incredible lesson for a young person getting into training, because it's a frightening thing to take on. It was frightening at my age to take on the role of foreman, being in charge of people much older than me. Then it's a series of steps to becoming a trainer — a huge financial burden in Australia and elsewhere, with all the responsibilities and the pressures of abiding by rules you sometimes don't even know you're breaking until you learn what the rule is. You need to navigate all that while training a horse and getting the most out of it for your owner. His ability to always be confident in what he was doing — I think that's the answer.
There's a lot he didn't like about it. He didn't like doing interviews, didn't really like doing updates for owners. He didn't have a computer in his office — he refused. He'd say, "James, go and let Matthew Sandblom know something good happened with his horse." I'd say, "Okay — you want to give him a call?" "No, no, write him a fax." He still thought Bill Charlton, his assistant, was writing handwritten notes on faxes to people. That was his mentality. But the things he loved — he just loved training horses, loved to source a horse, find one at a sale. He really loved looking after the horses. He'd fight with vets about even considering the economic implications of decisions based on the value of a horse — he'd just want to look after that horse no matter what. There were times he spent more on a horse's vet fees in a month than the horse was worth, because that was his attitude: he was the custodian of that horse and had to do the right thing by it. He maintained that all along — right up until the end, with runners like Precedence in the Melbourne Cup, prepared to gallop them the day before the race. Other trainers would wonder whether that was the right thing to do. In Hong Kong some trainers have tried it — I've seen comments about galloping a horse the day before a race in Stewards' reports, which I find interesting. Trainers would wonder if Bart had gone mad, but he was just sticking to what he was confident in, and no amount of failure would lead him to lose any of that confidence. I find that quite rare.
**Michael Cox:** Did he express the importance of that to you, and where did it come from? In racing, no matter how good you are, you lose more than you win. Is it something you carry from him naturally? Was there a bluff to it — fake it till you make it? Where does that level of confidence come from?
**James Cummings:** Maybe it was just him. I couldn't say whether it started from something, because that was too long ago. Although — once in Adelaide, a gentleman came up to the fence while I was saddling a horse in what might've been the SA Derby. As it turns out he was an old acquaintance of Bart's, used to kick around with him when they were younger, and he couldn't wait to tell me he'd written a book and Bart appeared in one of the chapters. He'd started Oliver's Pet and Produce in Adelaide, presumably supplying stables over the years. He was a teenager with Bart when there was nothing in Adelaide — a rural little town at the time. "You wrote a book — who published it?" "I published it. I've got one in the boot of the car." He sold them for twenty bucks, going to charity, a few running costs. He gave me the book and I shared it around the family. There were insights into what Bart was like as a teenager, what he got up to — how true it all is, I'm not sure, it's difficult to fact-check. But there might have been a little bit of bluff at the beginning. Equally he always had charisma — a charismatic, very charming guy when he needed to be. He probably learnt that growing up in an interesting place like Adelaide. He liked to tell me he spent time, when he wasn't in the stables, working in a tailor's, selling suits. It's funny how you develop skills in different ways — his ability to sell a yearling was probably born in his time spent selling silk.
**Michael Cox:** There is a little bit of tailor's salesmanship in the flogging of yearling shares.
**James Cummings:** Definitely. If you click on a few old photos of him at the races, he was a pretty sharp dresser. Even at track work — one of the best-dressed trainers — and that probably stems from that era. Colin Hayes, T.J. Smith, Bart — they'd all dress well at the track. Serious guys, big swingers, but stylish. His time in the tailor's had a profound effect. He wouldn't even agree to do something like this. I suppose he did once, sat down with Tracy Grimshaw — I don't think he enjoyed it. He'd much rather handle the media in a short, abrupt way after a race win. The rest was up to me. It was an unwritten rule: pre-race interviews were done by me, post-race winning interviews by him. Very interesting aside — the post-race Stewards' interviews were done by me too.
**Michael Cox:** Wow — right under the gun.
**James Cummings:** A great learning curve as a young man. "Mr Cummings, please explain the instructions given to Michael Rodd on Moatize in the race on the Saturday before the Sydney Cup." What a learning curve. But what do you do? Bart didn't go into the Stewards' room. Mr Murrihy — he accepted it, and you just move on.
**Michael Cox:** I want to talk about the last year, as we get closer to your debut as a Hong Kong trainer — a really unique situation. I've asked a lot of people whether anyone's been in this position. It just worked out that you had a "gap year," as they call it coming out of high school into university. Tell us what you set out to achieve, and what it was like being the observer on the other side of the fence.
**James Cummings:** I've had a really interesting year, fortunate to be helped by a lot of people to do some travelling and get insights into stables overseas and training centres. I've also had an insight into what retirement might be like — and I'm in no rush to retire, so I'm looking forward to getting back into it. Having some horses again, being over the stable door, being part of the atmosphere, has been really fulfilling these last few weeks. I made quite a few trips to Hong Kong, met a few people, came to the opening meeting of the season to watch Ka Ying Rising. That was a dramatic day — the storms rolling in. As a newcomer I wondered, would they even race? In Australia, if it was bucketing down, with that lightning storm — quite dramatic. But the weather cleared, the race day was terrific, and he ran a blistering time. I was reading the body weights — the Hong Kong Jockey Club website's a treasure trove of information — and David Hayes' comments before the race. I found all of that fascinating.
From there I flew to Ireland and spent time visiting Coolmore. I saw Aidan O'Brien's property, John Magnier's farm, Joseph O'Brien's training setup — amazing — and enjoyed Champions Weekend: the Irish Champion Stakes at Leopardstown and the St Leger the following day. I saw good horses like Kyprios — and got to see him again at the Breeders' Cup, because my next trip was the US. I got to see Bob Baffert training his string in preparation for the Breeders' Cup at Del Mar. The first week I was at Santa Anita — they do hold a Breeders' Cup there from time to time, but last year it was at Del Mar, so before the horses moved I got to see Bob and his team: Jimmy, his foreman; Tom Ryan, who I stayed with and who took me to the track every day. Tom helps manage the horses for SF Racing, is a good friend of Henry Field's, and has experience in Australia too, so now he's able to help me out, which was amazing. I had the most unbelievable insight into how Bob Baffert runs his operation — his wife Jill in the office, running it like a family business, not so different to Australia. Some of the things I learnt there, some of the moments I was just able to be a fly on the wall for, were really cool — and it's the exact same moment as the Melbourne Spring Carnival, Melbourne Cup week. But when you're in the US for the Breeders' Cup, you barely know it's on in Australia. It's so far out of people's minds.
Fast forward — I flew to Japan for the Japan Cup. Not just the Japan Cup: I drove up to Miho and spent the night, saw the training centre the following morning — another great insight. All those trainers in one training centre, with a cap on horses, less than half the number Hong Kong trainers are allowed, all training in unison using those facilities, with some of the best-bred horses in the world that have ended up in Japan in recent years — culminating in the big meeting for the Japan Cup. Probably the only really good race on that meeting as it's evolved, but a pretty cool horse race to witness live. Calandagan winning it for the first time in so many years for a European horse was dramatic, and a bit of drama after the line with a couple of riderless horses — not ideal. Masquerade Ball was one of them, who ended up in Hong Kong a few months later to take on Romantic Warrior in one of the most talked-about races. Getting the chance to see all of that was fortunate, and for it to happen in positive circumstances, as a gap year and a way to learn a bit more — and to bring things to Hong Kong I might not otherwise have been equipped to bring. It also builds more contacts. Now I have people to call if I have a question about a horse in Ireland, or a better sense of the three-year-olds there because I saw the two-year-old races in September. I can get a bit more of a feel for it, which I find helpful.
I spoke to Caspar at the start of the season. Caspar knew he didn't have a really good horse in the stable — he hasn't run a single horse in a Group One this season, and yet he's bolted in to win the premiership. A super-sharp operator who understands the handicaps well. Hong Kong's a handicap system — it's not the case that you take a horse to a set-weights maiden and, as the best horse without terrible luck, it just wins. It's the closest finishes in the world, out of anywhere. If you can't adapt quickly to the significance of that, it'll hurt you. But I'm here to learn about it, open-minded, fascinated by it. I've been studying it carefully, going through lots of replays from the perspective of: how do I put myself in the shoes of that trainer, what did he do? I've asked trainers, and I've asked jockeys. The jockeys have a great insight into the whole ecosystem of Hong Kong — none more so than Zac. He's the best, right? He knows the ebbs and flows of a horse's form, what's coming up to go well, when a horse has gone up too many points to win again. He'll do his best, but he knows when he's been crushed by the handicapper. And the handicapper is brilliant — it gives the owners their chance; every owner gets a chance. From that perspective, the handicap helps me too. It's going to ensure I train winners, because if I just get out of the way and bring a horse to the races, I can make sure that happens. And I enjoy training horses for owners to race and win — that's why they've got them. So I won't be frightened to run horses. Gone are the days you can walk around with a twenty to twenty-five per cent strike rate — that's not going to happen in Hong Kong, because that's not the system. Learning that system is paramount.
One insight about the training of horses. I remember Kementari, who I've got up on my wall — he won the Randwick Guineas, beautiful, well-bred horse, by Lonhro, who went to stud and was really popular; other breeders invested in the horse. But tragically he proved one of the least fertile horses Sheikh Mohammed ever stood at stud. It happens from time to time — part of bloodstock. So Vin Cox and I are talking about what to do; Vin's got to get approval up the line. "What do you think?" I said, "Why don't you geld him and put him back into work?" Someone else in the operation said, "James, I know there's this idea floating around that you might geld Kementari and bring him back — you don't want to do it to yourself. You can't win. It'll be too much of a burden, your horse coming back from the breeding barn. It's not going to work." It had been tried before at places like Crown Lodge, when the Inghams were in charge, not to a lot of success — a horse called Guineas, I think, either won once or maybe not at all, only ran well on a handful of occasions. I was told I was mad even considering it. But my attitude was: I've got nothing to lose. We know that horse. We loved training that horse. He went to stud as a four-year-old after his four-year-old season and had bumped into Winx a couple of times — the horse was seriously talented. Our attitude was: we're going to enjoy the challenge. A horse who'd been through what he'd been through wouldn't, in many minds, be an athlete with any interest in coming back to racing, especially after so long off. But between me and my team of managers, work riders and staff, we thrived on the challenge, and he came back to race. I thought he was going so well I accepted with him in the Group One Galaxy first run back, then thought better of it and waited a week — and he ran a slashing second at Rosehill. My father won the race, ironically. Kementari had a cracking career after his failed stallion duties. He travelled to Perth. His first win back as a gelding — he'd been looming up a few times and not getting it done, so the doubt was deep in everyone's minds that Kementari didn't have the will. We were at a managers' Christmas party at Edgecliff — a Kris Kringle, twenty or thirty of us, gifts fifty dollars or less. My gift was a fifty-dollar win ticket on Kementari in Perth. My media guy got the ticket, and with the option to trade or not, he wasn't trading — and no one else thought a fifty-dollar ticket was worth trading either. That night, Kementari won the Scahill Stakes in Perth — now a million-and-a-half-dollar race, part of their summer series. He was back. He won at Flemington, at Randwick — a Hallmark Stakes at Randwick, near the willow, shaving the inside fence. Thankfully the movable rail — the plastic movable rail — because he moved it; he pushed it to its limit. But my god, the horse couldn't have shown any more desire, going where any man would fear to tread. He put his head in there and dug deep to win a pretty good field — incredible effort. On the same day, Cascadian won the All-Aged Stakes — the same horse I brought back from a 2000-metre run in the Australian Cup back to 1400 metres, a proper field, at his ripe old age to beat those horses. Unbelievably rewarding for our operation. People scoff at it, but these are our warriors, our aging warriors, and we loved looking after them — you get to spend more time with them, learn about them; they're not here one moment, gone the next; they're with you season in, season out.
You're probably wondering how that relates to your question, since these are proper horses. The beauty is you get to know those horses, what makes them tick, and get them to come back from adversity. From the outside their careers might look smooth sailing, but behind closed doors no racehorse's career is ever that smooth. There's a lot that goes on and needs to be managed — and that's what's amazing about getting the most out of an older horse, getting them to rate just as highly at seven, eight, nine, ten as they did at four and five. That's Hong Kong — that's David Hayes winning the last at Happy Valley on Wednesday by an inch, coming down to the wire, Hugh Bowman and Andrea Atzeni fighting for outright second in the jockeys' table. It won't make a massive difference for Andrea and Hugh in the grand scheme, but it was dramatic — for that horse, having his sixtieth start and winning by an inch for Hugh, quite incredible. I've got no doubt it gave the people who look after that horse a massive thrill. And Tony Cruz the same, with his aging warrior delivering a couple of really good wins in a row towards the end of the season — Beauty Joy. João Moreira jumps on one day and gets the job done. That's a significant part of it.
There are lots of times I've trained horses put up for sale — last-start winners, put up for sale because they're not part of the strategy for Godolphin, and that's fine. I didn't necessarily want to see those horses go — I loved training them — but it's part of the strategy, and you accept it and move on. I've enjoyed seeing them do well elsewhere, because they were trained for longevity and were able to enjoy it afterwards. And one other thing on that topic — really important with Caspar's season. If I could be so daring as to give an insight: you should ask him, and I really enjoyed your Idol Horse interview with Caspar, well worth reading. What struck me is that Caspar's season hasn't been about having the best horses — we all know that — but the best horses in his stable are his team of people. His family behind him, his sons, João Moreira coming in. It's been his people driving his season, not the horses. Training a good horse or a Class Five horse is as much about the people you've got as the horse you've been given.
**Michael Cox:** So it's about the energy you bring. There's an awful lot of willpower and intent about Caspar's championship.
**James Cummings:** Yeah — and trust, and family. Who's the best horse in this stable?
**Michael Cox:** I wouldn't be able to pluck the name.
**James Cummings:** It's Caspar. It's not done without his leadership, but it's also not done without the people he's leading, the team he's put together, the family behind him. There's so much to be said for that, and you see it in good stables all over the world, particularly in good times — because good stables go through peaks and troughs. When they're flying, having their greatest years, and you ask "How come it all clicked?", those trainers look back and think, "I just tended to have the perfect person in all the perfect roles that year." It's not always possible to keep that constant.
**Michael Cox:** Last question — what does success look like? Whether it's a number, or something you look back on after this first season. What will make it a success?
**James Cummings:** It's difficult to say with any conviction until I know exactly what I'm starting out with. I'm up to twenty-six horses now — only twenty-six. Not everybody's the same or has the same opportunity. I've got some beautiful horses on the way, and I've already been in receipt of some transfers — the transferred horse in Hong Kong is a really interesting thing. The owners have really supported me so far; I've been quite blown away by that. But circumstances change one year to the next. There's no retiring trainer for me coming in this season — I'm one out, and I've got to find what I can find, and hopefully the horses I've recruited into Hong Kong are going to be excellent, because I've tried to bring in as good a horse as I can. Equally, I'm aware I'll only be able to race my transfers in the first period of the season — they'll make up the bulk of my runners, as they do for all new trainers. So I can only really answer the question when I have a full picture of what I've got. I'm good at assessing where a horse will be — I've done it so long, I've been forced to be good at it — so I'll know more when I sit down with you again in September. But there's real promise there, and I'm confident we're going to make an impact.
It's a long process. You've got to be patient, retain composure in an intense season, and play the long game — my success or failure won't be dictated just by season one. Many experienced people in Hong Kong observe that your second and third seasons are a greater indicator of your potential as a future trainer here, which is fascinating, and I can see the logic. Yet in contradiction to that, to be successful in Hong Kong you must start well. I don't have to have all the runners in September, but when I start my runners, they've got to start well. It's been drilled into me. It was far from my intention to start poorly, so that's at the forefront of my mind. When I weigh all that up, it boils down to doing the best you can with the horses you've got — and the team of people you're leading are pivotal to any success we have with those horses.
**Michael Cox:** James Cummings — our thanks to James for a terrific chat. For more of the best in world racing, head to idolhorse.com, and if you enjoyed this episode, make sure you subscribe wherever you're listening so you don't miss what comes next. Thanks again to Keeneland's September Sale. We'll see you next time on the Idol Horse Podcast.