A change is proving as good as a rest for Luca Cumani

When Luca Cumani said he had "just decided on a change of direction" last October, he meant it.

The 'R' word has never been mentioned and is contradictory in any case, considering that he never seemed the type for idle afternoons at the golf club.

There has been a sale and a move from Bedford House, his home for more than 40 years, plus lock and stock dispersal of everything from horses to the beige and brown rugs which made his string so recognisable on the Heath. Even the cigarettes have gone, replaced by a state-of-the-art vaping kit.

A health scare in the spring took a toll but an old regime is gradually being replaced by one involving considerably more time spent at Fittocks Stud, an establishment he has quietly been developing since the early 1980s. While Cumani has generally deferred to his wife Sara over matters of that family business, he can now double the pairs of eyes.

"I used to call myself the non-executive chairman, and now I’ve come back and I’m battling with Sara to see if I can become executive chairman," he says.

"Basically Sara has always been in charge of day-to-day things and I’ve been in charge of strategy and planning, and the financial side, now I take a bit more interest in the day-to-day, I can see the horses more often than I used to, it used to be only once a week, so it's great. Sara is still in charge of admin, but it’s difficult to explain how it works unless you saw us every day."

There are 16 mares of their own, and others boarded for long-term partners such as Craig Bennett’s Merry Fox Stud, based just down from the millionaires’ row of Juddmonte, Darley and Cheveley Park.

Clustered around Upend, a hamlet of thatched cottages so perfect they seem to be waiting for the arrival of a saccharine Richard Curtis film, Fitttocks Stud will offer its own yearlings for the first time at Tattersalls in October.

Luca Cumani watches on as much of his training equipment was auctioned in the spring

"We never consigned for ourselves before, they would go to Highclere, because I always felt I should keep at arm’s length from selling," explains Cumani. "As a trainer it can be quite confusing for people to be seen buying and selling at the same time.

"We have two for Book 1 - a lovely Dubawi colt out of Koora, she’s a Pivotal Group-winning mare out of Kithanga, so it’s one of our best families, and one is for Stuart Stuckey. He’s by Frankel out of Cascata, who’s a sister to St Nicholas Abbey. They are really good individuals. Then maybe seven for Book 2, three or four are ours, and others for other people."

A roll-call of the Fittocks mares evokes plenty of memories. Kithanga, now retired in a field, is from the same family tree as Cumani's first Derby winner Kahyasi and delivered a St Leger winner in Milan.

Barter traces back to the line of Souk, from where Alexandrova and Magical Romance hail, while the Park Hill winner Silk Sari is a direct descendant of the late Gerald Leigh’s greats Barathea and Gossamer.

"She has a Frankel colt, which we’re going to retain," Cumani says of Silk Sari. "He’s not quite the sort for Book 1, he’s a bit backward, but I think he’ll be all right."

Cumani explains that the majority of the Fittocks product has always been for sale, but that a handful of fillies have been held back to maintain bloodlines. Nowadays they are trained by others and he has three apiece with Sir Michael Stoute, William Haggas and James Fanshawe.

"There are obviously others (good trainers) but I wanted to keep them in Newmarket to see them progress," says Cumani. "All three are also friends, I always got in with them beyond just being trainers."

Although it is surely an unfamiliar feeling, he maintains that he takes a hands-off approach.

"I behave with my trainers the way I’d like my owners to behave with me," he says with a knowing smile.

"I do go sometimes to see them in the morning, or evening stables, generally I wait for the trainers to ask me, rather than go myself. I've got three very good trainers that I greatly respect, and I know the horses are in good hands."

Among those to run in the blue and buff silks are five two-year-olds, none of which he expects to appear in the immediate future. It is a habit he plans to continue.

"As long as I can afford to have a few in training, as long as my mares keep doing well and we can sell some horses to keep the whole charabanc going, then we’ll carry on doing it," he says.

"We keep trying to improve the quality of the mares, we generally try to buy a mare each year, either something we haven’t got or something that’s better than our worst one.

"The quality is, generally speaking, in the hands of the big conglomerates. It’s very hard to compete but, as we know, it isn’t just about money, and if a bit of luck comes your way you can have some results."

St Simon Stakes winner Koora is from one of the best Fittocks familiesCredit: Mark Cranham

Reminiscences were made last November when God Given signed off Cumani’s tenure on a perfect note in the Premio Lydia Tesio. It is hard to precis his career in any event, from the more fleeting association with racehorses from Tolomeo and Commanche Run to High-Rise and Falbrav, and the guiding of jockeys including Frankie Dettori and Jason Weaver.

In a sense, many of his achievements live on materially in the form of the individuals in his fields at Fittocks, where the emphasis is on the future, rather than the past.

"I count my blessings that I’m so lucky I have this possibility to have changed jobs as opposed to retire," reflects Cumani.

"I think once you’ve trained for 43 years, you’ve done your bit. I’m lucky that I’m still alive aged 70 and I’m really contented in what I’m doing now.

"I’m very relaxed, I haven’t got the stress of training, and the bad news that you have every five minutes with horses, sometimes the amount of flak that you get from your owners, and the disappointment when horses let you down.

"I’m still involved, that’s the important thing, and I love racing, I watch every single race that is of interest, I'm on the computer checking the results from around the world. I haven’t given up at all."

Flying colours

Luca Cumani’s first season exclusively as an owner has already seen Kirstenbosch take two neat steps up the ladder, at Chelmsford and Redcar, for her new handler James Fanshawe.

She is the final foal of Kassiyra, an Aga Khan mare Cumani bought because she was a relative of Kithanga. Although she bore the American Grade 3 winner Cheetah, she was frequently barren and a cover by Mount Nelson had been the final roll of the dice.

His response as to Kirstenbosch’s future prospects would appear much the same as they might have sounded were he training her.

"It’s very early to be talking her up, she’s just won two very ordinary races, but her next will be the Lyric at York, a Listed race, at the end of the month," he says.

"If she can do that, then we know are talking about a very decent horse. So far we can only talk about a very promising filly."

It seems fitting that Kirstenbosh is with the preternaturally patient Fanshawe, perhaps the trainer cast in the closest image of her owner in terms of modus operandi and another not readily associated with debut winners.

"It applied throughout my career as well, if they won first time out they are a bit above the norm," says Cumani. "Hopefully that’ll be the case here too."

Cumani insists that an entry in next month’s Darley Yorkshire Oaks is probably optimistic - "it was a suggestion from the trainer and I will always respect trainers’ opinions" - but it doesn’t appear that he is totally surprised.

"I had her last year, she was a leggy, unfurnished, backward filly but she showed a bit of promise," he says. "She’s a very good mover but she was very weak, that’s why we didn’t run her."

Silk Sari won the 2014 Park Hill Stakes for his owner-trainerCredit: Mark Cranham

He continues: "It’s a gradual process of discovery with horses. Some can look very good on the gallops and you’re not sure until you race them if they’re going to be equally good or not.

"With the backward ones that are bred to stay, as two-year-olds they’re not going to show you their best as they’re working over only five or six furlongs and that’s not going to be their trip.

"You can only guess that there's something nice about them, and then they have to keep on improving and building on that. Luckily she did."

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