Hughie Morrison: Success Breeds Success

Granted that his late father, James, the second Lord Margadale, bred and owned Oaks winners Juliette Marny and Scintillate, it’s probably no surprise that Hughie Morrison became a racehorse trainer. In fact, despite initially pursuing a career outside racing, he later observed, “I was always craving an involvement in racing; I just felt one was expected to do something more…proper.”

That involvement began with Paul Cole, for whom he worked, unpaid, as assistant trainer for two years. In September, 1996, he bought Summerdown Stables in East Isley, Berkshire from Simon Sherwood and started training, with just eight horses, the following spring. Two decades or so later, Morrison, 57, is still at Summerdown and has saddled over 800 winners.

Ironically, Morrison recorded his first major success with Frenchman’s Creek, whom he also bred, in William Hill National Hunt Chase at the Cheltenham Festival in 2002. He also fondly remembers Tom Paddington, bred by his second wife, Mary, who broke down over hurdles at Newbury in 1999, but won on his reappearance at the Berkshire course in 2002 after 1,351 days off. “You can’t buy that sort of pleasure”, Morrison recalled.

More recently, Morrison has enjoyed numerous high-profile victories on the Flat, including Group 1 successes for Pastoral Pursuits in the Darley July Cup at Newmarket and Alcazar in the Prix Royal at Longchamp in 2005 and Sakhee’s Secret in the Darley July Cup, again, two years later. He has saddled six Royal Ascot winners, including a double, with Sagramor in the Britannia Stakes and Pisco Sour in the Tercentenary Stakes, in 2011. The most poignant, however, was Waverley in the Duke of Edinburgh Stakes in 2003. Morrison said of him, “He belonged to my father, who had died only two months earlier. It was a very emotional time for all the family.”

In May, 2017, Morrison was charged by the British Horseracing Authority after his 4-year-old filly Our Little Sister tested positive for the prohibited anabolic steroid nandrolone laurate after finishing last of nine, beaten 19 lengths, in an otherwise unremarkable handicap at Wolverhampton the previous January. He took the unprecedented step of offering a £10,000 reward to clear his name, claiming that the horse had been maliciously injected.

At a subsequent independent disciplinary hearing, Morrison conceded that he was in breach of the strict liability rule, but claimed that deliberately doping Our Little Sister – who had a handicap rating of just 52 and was retired from racing a maiden after nine starts – would have been “professional suicide”. In any event, he was found “not to blame” and fined the minimum £1,000.