Peter Hiatt predicts more smaller trainers to struggle as he ends 28-year career

Peter Hiatt, a fixture of the training ranks for nearly 30 years, is to retire when his licence expires at the end of the month and believes smaller trainers are being squeezed out of the sport through lack of support.

Hiatt, 79, had his first runners in 1992 and trained a total of 342 winners over jumps and on the Flat, where the majority of his success came.

While not totally retreating from racing, Hiatt admitted issues around staffing and competing against the increasingly omnipotent super stables has made training no longer viable.

He said: “I won’t be renewing my licence this year. We ran out of riders in the end. We had only half the amount of horses we used to have and in the end we didn’t have good enough riders who were reliable.

“I’ve got one I’m going to run this winter [as an owner] who I’ve sent to be trained by John Gallagher. I’m getting on a bit now and I’d like to do a bit of travelling around Scotland in the summer. It’s all been good really and we won a lot of races with cheap horses.”

John Gallagher: will train a horse owned by Peter Hiatt

Hiatt’s most notable names were multiple winners Royal Circus, Lost Spirit and Isa’Af, who was one of a number of castoffs from Hamdan Al Maktoum’s Shadwell operation who the trainer managed to turn into a success story.

“Isa’Af was a cripple really,” Hiatt said. “They thought he was so bad they couldn’t do anything with him, but we got him right and he won us 11 races. After that Dennis O’Brien, who works for Shadwell, called me over and said if you can win with that horse you can win with anything and he put me right every year since.”

Much of Hiatt’s success came with cheap horses running in lower-grade races and operating at such a level is increasingly becoming more tricky, according to the trainer.

He said: “I think it’s more difficult for people like me nowadays. Twenty years ago you could run moderate horses on the all-weather and win races with them. You could always find a race and always get a run, but now all the big trainers are there and all the races are upgraded so there are fewer chances for the little guys with the cheap horses.

“The people who own those horses are still as valuable to the sport as anyone else, so [the authorities] really ought to try to put a little bit more money into the bottom end even though they don’t really want to.

"They just don’t really seem to want the people at the lower level, but they can’t have the amount of racing they’ve got if they haven’t got the smaller people.”

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