Ed Walker interview: From the 'grim' insecurity of his early years as a trainer to having the favourite at Epsom

Ed Walker is entitled to sleep a bit fitfully on the eve of this year’s Investec Derby with the favourite, English King, in his Lambourn stable. However, outwardly, he appears unfazed by what many would see as good, yet enormous, pressure.

As trainers go, Walker, 37, is still making his way up racing’s slippery ladder. Having started in 2010, early promise that he had what it takes was compromised by moving from one Newmarket stable to another four times in his first five years as rented yard after rented yard was sold from under his feet.

Now, though, he has settled at Kingsdown, and that stability has made the route to the top more direct. Having never won a Group One before, let alone a Classic, he could easily skip the last few rungs of the ladder in two-and-a-half minutes on Epsom Downs on Saturday.

“The insecurity in Newmarket was pretty grim and the uncertainty of ‘where next?’” he recalled. “Even when I moved to Warren Place (Sir Henry Cecil’s old yard) I knew that was only going to be a temporary stop.

“It was a wonderful address and great history and kind of embarrassing having some of my moderate horses in those boxes.

“This (Kingsdown) was yard five in my sixth year training. It was impossible to get any routine. When I had to leave Warren Place I was buying yearlings not knowing where they were going to be trained with my contract up in November.

“My results crashed at the end of that season. I was driving around the country looking at yards, wondering whether we were going to move to Chantilly or Yorkshire. My eye was firmly off the ball. It was a nightmare. There was a point where I thought, 'I can’t deal with this crap anymore'.”

He had never actually met Bjorn Nielsen, owner of English King and his current landlord, but he knew of him having worked at Watership Down Stud, where all his mares stand, and also for Roger Charlton who trained his Tante Rose to win the Haydock Sprint Cup (in 2004).

“I flew to New York to meet him,” he continued. “I think I was there for about 17 hours. I suppose it was more of a character interview than a job interview – ‘do I want this guy living in my garden?’ I knew when I moved down here I’d have a better chance (of training a Derby favourite) with a landlord and owner obsessed with trying to win it.

“I am starting to get a better calibre of horse sent to me by owner-breeders, so we are moving in the right direction but I have never won a Group One race. It would be a nice way to break the duck.”

Only when Frankie Dettori, booked to ride the colt at Epsom after winning the Lingfield Derby Trial so impressively, came to sit on the colt did Walker feel nervous.

“He is not the flashiest of work horses at home but on the track he turns it on,” he explained. “I was slightly nervous Frankie might not get a great feeling off him – he is a chilled out dude who only does what he has to.

“But Frankie is such a professional, he said, ‘I am not here to find out how good he is, I just wanted to get to know the horse’. I was a little more relaxed after that. You want his seal of approval. For my first Derby runner, especially with him being the favourite, it is a comfort to have someone like Frankie in the saddle.”

The coronavirus pandemic meant that if English King was going to be a Derby horse he had to go straight in the deep end this season.

“With Bjorn it is very straightforward, he buys these colts for one reason and for one reason only and that is to win the Derby. As he kind of says, tongue in cheek, winning a St Leger (Masked Marvel) or breeding a champion stayer (Stradivarius) is missing the mark. He is breeding horses which are too slow.

“I was very disappointed with his Newmarket run first time out last year. But mine can do that. I thought we had a nicer horse than that. He was then very impressive at Newcastle, the time was very good and we put him to bed for the winter thinking, ‘maybe’.

“Lingfield was the first time he stamped himself as a proper Derby contender in not just the public’s eyes but our eyes. We have seen brilliance one-and-a-half times if you include Newcastle but we don’t go looking for it at home. It is just a case of getting him as fit, healthy and happy as we can.”

Should he win it will bother Walker not a jot that no-one is there to witness it. “I don’t do what I do because I want to stand in front of a big crowd and be the centre of attention,” he said. “You do it because you want to work with and train nice horses.”

In English King he appears to have one.