LEGENDARY trainer Sir Mark Prescott says he will keep on getting up at 3.40am — until his body gives up on him.
Sir Mark, 76, was speaking to Sunracing in a rare and exclusive interview at his historic Heath House yard in Newmarket.
He also revealed how a horror fall left him paralysed and in hospital for a year and a half and ended his dream of being a jockey.
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Sir Mark turned to training soon after and said: “I get up at 20 to four every morning — and I’ve never been late for work. Not once, not in 57 years!
“That’s because I love what I do. And I plan to keep on doing it! I have no plans to retire. As long as I’m healthy I’ll keep going.
“When I had the fall I was left staring into the abyss. It changed my life.
“I love the people I work with — the horses, the owners I train for. I am fortunate and privileged to be able to do what I do.”
Sir Mark – who once smoked ten cigars a day – also offered a rare peek into his love life.
Racing can be a lonely life, with miles on the road and the high of a winner all too often replaced with the low of several losers.
But reflecting on his past and offering pearls of wisdom to those youngsters in the game Sir Mark opined: “Find someone faintly congenial to be a friend and partner.
“It’s not a high bar, is it? Just someone faintly congenial. I have managed it.
“There have been a few people rather than one. Just make sure you tell the person before you start dating that you’re not looking to get married!”
Sir Mark is the man the punters love (everyone knows about his horses improving for stepping up in trip) – and the bookies fear.
Brilliant Alpinista realised a life-long dream for Sir Mark when storming to Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe glory under lucky Luke Morris in 2022.
And, just last month, powerful Pledgeofallegiance ended the galloping Baronet’s 28-year wait for another Royal Ascot win.
Since then, the historic Newmarket yard have been firing in winner after winner.
Sir Mark’s loyal assistant William Butler has been waiting patiently in the wings to take over from his guv’nor… one day.
He has no idea when though — and neither does his legendary boss.
That’s because Sir Mark is still very much at full throttle.
He said: “When you love your job you don’t need any motivating,
“I get up in the morning at 20 to four — and I’m very keen to go.
“I’ve never been late to work in my life. Never once.”
He tells his staff regularly: “If I’m not out for first lot, don’t bother throwing gravel up at the window to wake me up, just send for an ambulance!”
And Sir Mark has amusing plans for when he is not as mobile as now, including installing an umpire’s chair with a megaphone to dish out the morning’s instructions.
RULE ONE: Find a job you enjoy. You spend half your life working. In my case even more! If you enjoy your work you go home a happy person.
RULE TWO: Good health. This is 50 per cent luck, 50 per cent the way you lead your life. Take care of your body and your body will take care of you.
RULE THREE: Find someone faintly congenial to be a friend and partner. It’s not a high bar, is it? Just someone faintly congenial. I have managed it. There have been a few people rather than one. Just make sure you tell the person before you start dating that you’re not looking to get married!”
When he’s too old even for that he jokes he will buy a rocking horse, call it Alpinista and train from a bedroom in the nearby old people’s home.
It sounds like Sir Mark’s loyal assistant might be retiring first.
The new breed of smooth-talking, suited ‘n booted media-savvy trainers are everywhere these days.
But not here. Sir Mark is old school. And proud of it.
A rare blend of being completely, unbendingly, his own man.
Whether that’s bashing William Haggas over the head with a frying pan for oversleeping when he was a young assistant at the stable.
Or famously turning away Sheikh Mohammed’s 60 yearlings because he didn’t want to train more than 50 horses at any one time — a rule he still keeps to.
Or, for that matter, crying on air when Alpinista — who won six Group 1s on the trot — ended her career in glory at an emotional Longchamp in 2022.
Yet Sir Mark still gets as much of a buzz from plotting one up for a Class 6 at Lingfield on a Tuesday afternoon.
And that is why punters will always love him. He knows the game. He plays the game. And he does it better than anyone.
Sir Mark took over from Jack Waugh at just 19 when the world was a different place.
Yet Prescott had been through more at that age than some people experience during a lifetime.
When he was a year old, he lost his father to cancer. Stanley Prescott, a Conservative MP from whom Sir Mark inherited his Baroncy, died at 50.
At 17, budding jockey Sir Mark had a catastrophic fall at the now-extinct Wye Racecourse which left him paralysed for eight weeks and in hospital for 18 months.
He said: “It was the single most important thing that happened in my life. I couldn’t blink. I couldn’t swallow. Any ordinary person cannot imagine it.
“You swallow your tongue if it’s not pinned, the nurses talk about you as if you’re a dog because you can’t answer!
“I was well accustomed to horror and tragedy. My brother and sister both died early.
“Michael was killed when he was 15 climbing Snowdon in a schoolboy accident when I was 11 or 12.
“Jane died when she was young, she got pneumonia — children died of that in those days.
“Poor mother, she lost two of her three children before she died.
“I suppose because she was in the war it wasn’t such a shock — they were used to death.
“It was a different world back then. People didn’t make such a terrible fuss about things like they do now. They just got on with it.”
Sir Mark attended the prestigious Harrow School but left at 15 to become a jockey. It was always going to be a childhood that shaped his future.
Sir Mark said: “I think it’s a shame for young people not to enjoy a good tussle. I used to argue with my parents like billion.
“Voltaire was the man who said ‘I hate every word you said but I would die for your right to say it.’
“I was a horrible child — I got chucked out of all these schools. But I think you need that, disliking your youthful self, to drive you on.
“I was pretty aggressive. I was driving on and had no patience with those who didn’t want to.”
Sir Mark’s immaculate stables are found just at the bottom of Warren Hill, Newmarket’s most famous gallop. Plenty has changed over the years, especially the faces he sees each and every morning.
The Newmarket young guns are now taking over town.
So, apart from making sure they shave every day and fasten up their top button, what words of advice does Sir Mark have for the new generation of trainers?
He said: “Training is something where only one person can be running it.
“Owners must believe you can do the job. You must must give them the feeling you know what you’re doing and that it is in their interest to sit back and leave you to it.”
Sir Mark is certainly happy with his lot. Skilled enough to have been a champion trainer — but wise enough to know the pitfalls that go along with that.
He said: “In most people’s careers when they have established themselves as relatively successful, some will say they will never be happy unless they are champion trainer.
“If I had wanted that I’d have had to have 300 horses and have been prepared to make my life a misery — to employ people I didn’t like and train for people I didn’t like — just to be champion trainer.
“It’s a trade-off.
“I chose to stay at 50 boxes and I feel privileged to train for who I like and employ people I like.
“I didn’t want to go out in the morning thinking, ‘God I’ve got to see all these people — and then I’ve got to spend hours ringing owners who I don’t want to talk to’.
“I always say to young trainers when you reach that stage you’re at a crossroads — you’ve either got to go, go, go, expand, expand, expand.
“Or you can say to yourself well, I’ll just measure my pace a bit and I’ll go for a long game.”
After 57 years, no one has mastered that better than Sir Mark.
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