“IT was the only thing I had in mind,” David Loder says emphatically when asked if a role in the racing business had always been his ambition. “Probably much to my regret!”

The latter remark is laced with levity. And with good reason, as regrets are notable by their absence only as Loder charts the unique trajectory of his career. There’s humour, ambition, pride and even pathos, but no regrets. Because who has time for those when there’s still work to be done?

Loder set out as an assistant to Sir Mark Prescott and Geoff Wragg before becoming a multiple Group 1-winning trainer in his own right. He saddled top-flight scorers such as Bahamian Bounty, Blue Duster, Desert Prince, Embassy, Lujain and Starborough to name but a few, but handed his licence in when still seemingly at the peak of his powers.

Other ventures followed, including a brief stint as a National Hunt trainer, while he also co-bred the top-class Fame And Glory with Kirsten Rausing and Richard Frisby.

But his most enduring commitment is to Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, who has built up his thoroughbred empire during the 31 years that Loder has been a loyal and trusted employee.

Nowadays Loder’s remit is to ensure the right raw materials make their way into the Godolphin system; offering opinions on stallions, assessing the Sheikh’s homebred stock and as a key figure in the buying team scouring the sales for blue-chip prospects.

“Sheikh Mohammed very kindly and generously employed me to train some horses for him for the first time in 1993,” says Loder. “Despite many faux pas on my behalf, including resigning in a moment of madness, with his usual generosity and kindness he has kept me on and kept me going and appears to have some interest in my opinion, which I’m very grateful to him for.”

Starting out

Although Loder now occupies a lofty position in the bloodstock industry, he could not be accused of not earning his stripes. He began mucking out and riding out aged 15, and once he realised that a “slight size problem” precluded him from becoming a jump jockey, training became his primary focus. A brief spell in finance merely confirmed his belief that he belonged in the thoroughbred business.

“I spent two years in the City, mainly as a tipster,” he says wryly. “Luckily the partner I worked for loved horse racing and was a mad gambler. I joined a firm called Quilter Goodison, which was just a basic stock broker until they got bought by Banque Paribas. They only took 20 people from Quilter Goodison; luckily I got carried along and had my salary tripled and all the rest of it.

“But there came a time when I thought it was a bit ridiculous sitting there with the Racing Post tucked inside the Financial Times, so I trogged off to see Geoff Wragg. I persuaded him that he needed to take me on and didn’t need to pay me for several months until he’d decided I was worth having. I spent four very happy years there and had a lot of success.”

David’s cousin, Sir Edmund Loder, not only proved an early source of inspiration as the proprietor of Eyrefield Lodge Stud, but also bred and owned Wragg’s stable star Marling. The daughter of Lomond was an early Group 1 winner to bear David’s fingerprints, landing the Cheveley Park Stakes, Irish 1000 Guineas, Sussex and Coronation Stakes.

Sheikh Mohammed

The initial approach from Sheikh Mohammed followed soon after. Although the association got off to a promising start, it was not necessarily the start the sheikh had envisioned. “Sheikh Mohammed approached me to ask if I would like to go and train in Dubai just before he started Godolphin,” says Loder. “I, in my bull-headed, arrogant fashion, said thank you very much but no thanks. If you’d like to send 40 horses to New York then I’d love to go and train there.

“He said he didn’t want to do that, so I ended up renting Sefton Lodge in Newmarket and he very kindly sent me three yearlings, not 40. Luckily one of those was Overbury, who was second in the Italian Derby, second in the German Derby and won the American Derby all within the space of six weeks.”

Overbury was far from Loder’s only noteworthy early result. His very first winner, Lupescu, struck in the James Seymour Stakes at 20/1 within a month of setting up shop in the autumn of 1992. More success followed as Loder’s restless ambition saw a succession of cheaply bought yearlings transformed into significant talents.

His rise over the first six years was nothing short of meteoric, but those heady days of being British racing’s next big thing are recalled with fondness as well as unflinching introspection.

“I was very arrogant and was absolutely sure that I was the next champion trainer in waiting,” he says. “Very swiftly, and to confirm my own views of myself, my first winner was in a listed race at Newmarket.

“Luckily for me it was a recession at the time and by the autumn of ‘92 many breeders couldn’t give their yearlings away – literally. So I ended up with 20 or 25 yearlings in my yard by hook or by crook, because I didn’t have any owners to sell them to. But by pure luck we went on pretty much a rocket ride. It was unbelievable, really.”

Moreover, the facts and figures behind Loder’s final career tally do not tell the whole story. He also oversaw the early stages with the likes of Diktat, Kheleyf and Noverre before they were transferred to Godolphin’s principal trainer, Saeed bin Suroor.

Dubai Millennium

Another from this category did not just graduate to big-race success but left an indelible mark on the breed itself. Dubai Millennium was among Loder’s 1998 juvenile intake and was quickly identified as something completely out of the ordinary.

Recounting his time with the star-crossed son of Seeking The Gold, Loder says: “Sheikh Mohammed came up to the stable to look at his two-year-olds that year and the first thing he said to me was, ‘Which is the best one?’ I took him to Lujain’s stable and said ‘This horse will win the Middle Park and is probably going to be champion two-year-old sprinter.’ But then I said, ‘I think I’ve got one better, sir. In fact, I think I’ve got the best horse I’ve ever seen in my life.’

“So we went around to see Dubai Millennium, who was named Yaazer at that stage. Sheikh Mohammed said, ‘I want to call him Dubai Millennium, I want to change his name.’”

Another faux pas ensued. Loder continues: “I got very upset and said ‘No, no, no, sir, I want to enter him next week’ and started arguing with Sheikh Mohammed! In the end Simon Crisford said he thought I should just shut up.

“I was so wrapped up worrying about where my next winner was coming from that it never crossed my mind that the horse would be a four-year-old in the millennium year. I took my medicine and once he’d had his name changed he turned up at Yarmouth and all but trotted over the line a mile clear.”

After a solitary two-year-old start, Dubai Millennium made the switch to Bin Suroor, for whom he won four Group 1 prizes. The most famous among the quartet was also the most fitting: the Dubai World Cup in the millennium year.

Dubai Millennium’s time at stud was cut cruelly short as he succumbed to grass sickness early in his debut season. His legacy has been continued by Dubawi, who was among his sire’s solitary crop of 56 foals. “Sheikh Mohammed had a very close relationship with him in and out of the stable, and I think that meant a lot to him,” says Loder. “That he bred the horse, named him what he named him, and that he won the World Cup in that year, it gave him an enormous amount of pleasure.”

“Moment of madness”

Although it seemed unlikely at the halfway stage, Loder’s training career was confined to just 13 full seasons, five of which were spent heading up Godolphin’s private two-year-old division. The “moment of madness” came towards the end of 2002 when, aged just 38, Loder stunned the racing world by announcing his impending retirement, only to U-turn before the following season was out.

He was still able to call upon Sheikh Mohammed’s support when he returned to the public training ranks in 2004, and, the following year, duly saddled Goodricke to Group 1 glory in his final season with a licence.

“I sometimes think I was a fool to jack in the training,” he says, still with no discernible trace of regret. “I packed in when I’d just had the winner of the Haydock Sprint Cup, which to many people would sound a bit stupid. But I think I learned my lesson that I had a most unsuitable temperament for training racehorses on the basis that there was never going to be a 100% strike rate at the end of the season. I did manage to get reasonably close but never quite kept the 100, which was always a grave disappointment.”

Disappointment must have also been keenly felt by Sheikh Mohammed, as it wasn’t long after Loder’s retirement that he once again sought his services, albeit in a different capacity.

“Within a year His Highness very kindly asked me if I’d come back and help select some yearlings for Saeed bin Surooor,” he says. “I said I was quite happy to go under the radar and do my job, report to him and let him know what I thought.”

Yearling sales

At the time the John Ferguson era was in full effect. His resignation as chief executive in June 2017 saw John Gosden enter the fray for a brief period, after which the sheikh turned to Loder to select the yearlings to be trained at Moulton Paddocks.

Although Loder may have mellowed somewhat since his days as a trainer, the competitive flame remains very much ablaze. Never is this more apparent than when he discusses his role at the sales, particularly the pursuit of classic prospects.

“It’s a big challenge because you’re being asked to select horses for the biggest owner the turf has ever known,” he says. “I put myself under a lot of pressure in the same way as I did when I trained because I don’t like to get beaten.

“It doesn’t make it any easier when you have a big budget, and it probably puts you under more pressure because you’re there to be shot at. And, put it this way, you wouldn’t want to be missing too many good ones, unless there was a very good reason like the horse had failed the vet.”

While the Godolphin buying team of Loder, bloodstock agent Anthony Stroud and trainer Charlie Appleby are a familiar sight at high-end auctions, they operate under the direct instruction of Sheikh Mohammed, who takes an active part in proceedings even at the sales he is unable to attend in person.

“If I identify anything that I think is good enough for His Highness then I will ring him and tell him because he ultimately makes the decision, and the final decision about how much he’s prepared to pay,” says Loder. “I take my instructions from him, and whatever he wants me to do, I do it, within my capabilities.”

Recruiting for Godolphin may come with its own distinct set of pressures, but there is still scope for light as well as shade. As Loder discusses the dynamic with Appleby, his former travelling head lad, he reveals an unlikely comparison to a character from a popular BBC comedy. Fans of Blackadder will be well used to hearing the catchphrase “I have a cunning plan!”

“Due to the close attachment I have with Moulton Paddocks and Charlie, one gets to see the programme through with those horses. Charlie and I discuss the horses a lot and, as a trainer, hopefully it’s useful having someone who has some idea of what you’re going through, or knows the races,” he says before breaking into laughter. “My nickname is actually ‘Baldrick’ because I’m the man with all the good ideas!”

Pedigree issues

Much less of a laughing matter is the standard of stock available on the public market. Loder says the recruitment process has become increasingly impeded by waning numbers of horses bred to excel at classic distances. It is a familiar lament made all the more poignant by Sheikh Mohammed’s position as a perennial leading buyer.

“The pedigrees are not, to my mind, the same calibre as they maybe were 10 years ago,” Loder says. “As a consequence, that makes it a hell of a lot more difficult to buy really top-class classic horses at the sales. Most of the breeders at the sales, with a few exceptions, are what it would be fair to describe as commercial breeders. As much as they’d probably like their horse to win the Derby, the primary objective is to get as much money for it as they can at the sales.

“His Highness wants to win Derbys, Arc de Triomphes, those types of races. He would be thrilled to win an Ascot Gold Cup. He’s not looking at a horse purely from its commercial point of view, he’s hoping he can select champion racehorses over classic distances.

“I feel, and I’ve had this conversation with him in the last two years, that we, as one of the larger groups of buyers, have been forced down a channel where we know we’re not buying exactly what we look for in terms of pedigree. Rather, we’re buying what Sheikh Mohammed thinks is the best there is on offer. And that’s what he wants: the best. If it turns out to be over a shorter distance, so be it. What makes me nervous is that I think this will become more and more of the case as we move forward.”

Godolphin have, at least in part, been guarded against this market shift by the prosperity of their homebred programme.

Harnessing the sire power of Dubawi has been a particularly important factor in the operation’s recent resurgence. His emergence as a consistent source of elite performers broadly coincided with Godolphin lifting the self-imposed boycott on Coolmore stallions. With a champion sire among their own ranks and with access to the finest outside names available, anything is possible once more.

Stallion scene

And it is not just on the racecourse that Godolphin are looking to assert a dominant position. Dubawi is becoming an increasingly important sire of sires, while he is joined on the Darley stallion roster by rising stars Blue Point, by Shamardal, and Too Darn Hot. Ghaiyyath, Dubawi’s highest-rated offspring, also has a big part to play in a bright future, having been pinpointed as the heir apparent.

“Sheikh Mohammed is very invested in Ghaiyyath so we’re hoping he can pick up Dubawi’s mantle,” Loder says. “It’s an exciting time. Of course it’s much more helpful that we’re able to pick and choose the stallions from the whole spectrum, rather than be excluded. For instance, Sheikh Mohammed sent six nice mares to Justify. He likes him and he’s obviously got the potential to be a top-class sire.”

Loder, who turned 60 this year, has certainly had an eventful career to this point, and he laughs when asked what he might do better if he had his time again, simply saying “Everything!”

But, having shown flair each step along the way, there is little wonder he is able to reflect on the past with a level of contentment that seemed notably absent during his younger years. And who knows what still lies ahead?

“I love my job and I love working for His Highness Sheikh Mohammed,” he says. “I get a great kick out of picking out young horses, and hopefully recommending the right ones.”