'It's just not the same' - Group 1-winning trainer Eric Alston to retire

Eric Alston, who reached the pinnacle of the sport from his small Lancashire stable with European champion sprinter Reverence, will retire at the end of the season following a career in racing spanning several decades.

Alston, 78, has proved himself a dab hand with sprinters, never more so than with Reverence, the flashy chestnut with the narrow white blaze who won the Nunthorpe and Sprint Cup in the space of ten days in 2006.

Numbers have dwindled at Edges Farm Stables in Preston in recent years and Alston, who has been ably assisted by wife Sue, has decided to call time on a training career that started in 1978.