‘Once upon a time you’d see tumbleweeds blowing across the gallops’ - the resurrection of a once-mighty training centre
Lewis Porteous takes a trip to the North Yorkshire racing town of Middleham
It is Monday morning and Spigot Lodge is a hive of industry. With horses and humans in every direction you look, all hands and hooves are to the pump at the start of another busy week.
In the nerve centre sits Karl Burke, carefully planning the days and weeks ahead, including what will no doubt be a big team heading around 50 miles south-east to York for next week’s Ebor meeting.
The son of a publican who was raised in Rugby, Burke has built up one of the most powerful Flat yards in Britain and he has done it in Middleham, a historic training centre that was, in the not-too-distant past, somewhat down on its luck – in keeping with the yard that tempted the former journeyman jump jockey to move here from Newmarket in 2001.
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Published on inIn Focus
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