The Lambourn monorail: how Harry Teal and star sprinter Oxted are breathing new life into the village's white elephant

It might have become something of a white elephant, but the pre-training monorail system at Kingwood Stud – or at least part of it – is back in business, thanks to Group 1-winning trainer Roger Teal's son Harry.

Unveiled in front of luminaries including Sir Anthony McCoy and Martin Pipe in 2017, the multi-million-pound model, easily visible from the road by anyone entering Lambourn on the B4000, allowed riderless horses to be loosely tethered to a spacious cabin, where a 'driver' would sit and control the speed, which ranged from a walk to a slow canter.

It was the brainchild of Turkish businessman Mehmet Kurt, who christened his pride and joy Kurtsystems and pioneered the technology for it in his homeland in the 1990s. Kurt bought Kingwood Stud from Fiona Marner in 2011 and his investment in Lambourn was described at the time as a huge vote of confidence in the area by former Newbury MP Richard Benyon.