Arlary - Lucinda Russell

It was her splendid, two-horse raid on the Cheltenham Festival that made me want to talk with Scotland’s leading National Hunt trainer Lucinda Russell, but the first subject was Conner McCann.

Conner began riding out at her stables (Arlary, Milnathort, Kinross, just north of Edinburgh) when he was 14, and has worked there ever since. He got his jumps licence last autumn and has had 13 rides and 4 winners.

On Saturday 26th March Conner, still a teenager, fell at Kelso. ‘It was a really horrible fall’, said Lucinda, with emphasis. ‘Everyone in the yard was watching. His girlfriend works here’.

At the time of the conversation Conner had been in hospital for four days and the prognosis was that he would need three months to fully recover. He has since been discharged and is upright.

Initially the fear was that the injuries might have been career-ending, or worse. I asked if the shock had had a negative effect on the work at the stables. No, not really, was the answer. ‘We all know we’re walking a tightrope’.

The love of this trainer for those she works with is evident and is expressed quietly. It’s partly based on what is shared, inevitably, between them. Not just ordeals and surviving them (although, for many, working in the Kinrosshire air at 6.00 am in the winter months might be considered an ordeal) but ordinary stuff, routine. Everyone mucks out, for example. There is no hierarchy where some avoid the dull or at any rate unexciting daily tasks. I get the impression Lucinda is slightly puzzled at the idea that it could be any different.

Races

We turned to the remarkable last to first win of Corach Rambler in the Ultima and the highly decent second place in the Brown Advisory by Ahoy Senor. Was it fun smuggling English loot back over the border?

‘It was fabulous. It’s a great thing to go there … and to come back with first and second from any meeting is fantastic, but Cheltenham is even more exciting. The horses in question have actually come out of their races with greater confidence. It’s exciting when you’re competing at the top level and to feel you have a horse that’s going to go on and improve. It makes you hungry for more’.

Unless Lucinda is susceptible (like the rest of us) to attacks of absurd optimism in early April then the 9 year-old Mighty Thunder (40/1 at the time of speaking) has a real chance in the National, providing the ground stays good to soft. ‘He's a huge price. I’m pretty confident’, said the trainer.

Although Mighty Thunder has been pulled up in his last two, once because the going was too heavy and once for breathing difficulties (for which he has had a wind op), his form of 12 months ago is eye-catching.

A recent mental health course was mentioned. There was emphasis on an individual being “in control”. Lucinda enjoyed the experience but had a caveat.

‘In racing you can't be in control, you just can’t. You’ve got bad weather, or horses tripping or falling, there’s Conner, and it’s the tenacity and the resolve that you bring out in yourself, you’ve got to have it and if you don’t have it it’s probably not the right sport for you. The people we call good, the horsemen, they have a bit of harshness about them. It's not cruelty, but its harshness that says “I’m (suppressed expletive) going to do that”. You’ve got to have that. There’s no ego, no place for being better or worse than others because at any moment you might fall on your head’.

Freud

I was interested in Lucinda’s decision to study Psychology at St Andrews back in the late 80s. Why did she pick that subject? Hilarity was instant.

‘I went’, said Lucinda, recalling her teenage self, ‘to a very smart all girls school. It was brilliant, the teachers were fantastic. I hated every minute of it.

‘I was so naughty, so bad, so stubborn. Anything they suggested I just went against it. I just rebelled. They said I should go to university and study English or Biology. I said I’m not going to’.

Lucinda’s brother’s girlfriend was doing Psychology. That sounded ok. ‘I had to look it up in the dictionary to learn how to spell it, but even then I thought I was doing Physiology. At the first lecture they said “you probably think this is all going to be about Freud”. I thought - what’s Freud?’

It was tempting to ask what other chaos had been visited on friends and family as a result of the cheerfully owned-up to stubbornness but, instead, I wondered if she was always going to work with horses. ‘Of course I was, my parents didn’t know’.

Tweets

In the immediate aftermath of Conner’s accident Lucinda posted on Twitter:

“Conner has two broken ribs, three fractures in his thoracic vertebrae and a suspect fracture in C6 vertebrae, and a tiny fracture of his fibula, luckily no head injury. He is due an MRI scan tomorrow to check his fractured vertebrae and we will know more about recovery then.

*Conner’s first words to me yesterday were ‘how’s Diamond, is my horse ok are you sure he’s ok’. Today he has mostly slept. Thanks to everyone who has expressed concern over Conner’s fall and wished him a speedy recovery and sorry to all those I have not had time to reply to.”

Compassionate, unsentimental, necessarily detailed.

I suspect the presence at Arlary of loyalty, from and to all. A loyalty for all seasons, perhaps, understated of course, untrumpeted for sure, unsignalled for definite and upheld, I feel certain, by an impregnable stubbornness.