'I promised I'd come back with the right horse' - top Jersey trainer hoping it will be second time lucky with Laytown runner

One of Jersey’s most successful trainers, Karl Kukk, is hoping it will be second time lucky at Laytown on Thursday when St Ouen is set to become his first ever Irish runner – provided he gets into the stalls.

The Scottish trainer travelled to Laytown with his consistent performer Herbalist in 2015, only for the foray to end in tears when the then five-year-old refused to load into the freshly implemented starting stalls. 

“I promised that I'd come back and this time I would have the right horse,” Kukk said. “Well, we've waited a long time but we’ve got one. St Ouen doesn’t train anywhere but the beach; he’s been on the beach all his life. 

"He'll be sharp as a pin. We don’t have stalls in Jersey and he hadn’t been in stalls since he was a two-year-old, but we rocked up at Amanda Perrett’s at Coombeland. She kindly let us use her stalls and he bounced out of them. He’s a total professional. We have covered all angles.”

Laytown: popular annual meeting has attracted a runner from JerseyCredit: Patrick McCann

Kukk is among the five most successful trainers of all time at his local track in Jersey, Les Landes, which is the latest stage of a racing career that has taken him all over the world.

"I worked breaking yearlings for John Hyde with Sheikh Hamdan in the royal stable for three seasons," he said. "I spent some time in Australia and then I came back home. I was working on the starting stalls and I told my friends I was burnt out. They used to ride in Jersey and said there's a job over there for the summer, so I said, let’s give it a go, and I'm still here. 

“Training in Jersey is unique. We have to get up sometimes at four o’clock in the morning because we have to be off the beach with the horses at half past ten due to the tide. It is one of the warmest places in the British Isles and I even swim the horses in the sea."

Should Kukk find some success on Laytown beach, the trainer is not ruling out more travelling, and he added: "Never say never. There are an awful lot of stipulations now. Before you could go into France and run your horse in Saint-Malo, which is only an hour and a half from Jersey, but now that has all kind of stopped. 

“It's actually quite a nightmare, but there are always owners who want to travel and if you have the will and the want then you never know.”

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