Gay Kelleway: 'Please tell me how to sell my product - I've run out of ideas'

Gay Kelleway paddles the same canoe as every other trainer without significant Middle Eastern patronage. The Covid-19-induced reduction to already meagre prize-money levels is affecting her business. There are empty boxes in her stables at Exning, on the fringe of Newmarket, but Kelleway diverges from her colleagues in one notable respect. Her predicament is self-induced.

While others batten down the hatches, Kelleway has encouraged owners with the right type of horses to send them to the French yard of her former partner Anne-Sophie Crombez. The advice comes at her own personal expense.

"From my perspective it doesn't make much sense," she says, "but from an owner's point of view it's only fair that a horse suited to French racing should go there. The alternative is to race for £2,000 at Wolverhampton."