IT’S not unusual for Jane Chapple-Hyam to be associated with big-name, big-race horses. They have been a part of her life from the very start, a childhood blessed with their brilliance and then a career burnished by the very best, her path to where she stands now strewn with milestones bearing their names.

Leilani, Beldale Ball, Sadler’s Wells, El Gran Senor, Rodrigo De Triano, Dr Devious, Balanchine, Black Caviar, some connections tighter than others but all of them names to make that path as much about the journey as the destination.

And the journey continues, for last month Chapple-Hyam laid down another lapidary marker along the way with the victory of Mill Stream in the Group 1 July Cup at Newmarket.

It was the biggest win of her career, the most prestigious, the most valuable success in her 20 years with a licence. And for all the banner headlines of the past, experienced from a distance or right up close, it’s always the latest news that carries the most weight. Chapple-Hyam is still taking it all in.

“It really means something, doesn’t it,” she says, basking in what passes for an English summer at her Abington Place yard on the Bury Road in Newmarket, comparing the weather unfavourably with the alternative in her native Australia. “Maybe it hasn’t quite sunk in yet.

Superstars

“I mean, just look at the history of the July Cup, see the sort of horses who have won it, superstars of the game and good stallions as well. It’s important for him to win a race like that, a stallion-making race - now let’s hope the phone starts ringing!”

As a son of the unimprovably-bred Gleneagles, some of Mill Stream’s allure as a potential stallion is inbuilt, but the four-year-old is taking care of the rest himself.

His improvement from his sophomore year has been substantial, with victory in the Group 2 Duke of York Stakes and third place in the Group 1 Queen Elizabeth II Jubilee Stakes at Royal Ascot preceding his July Cup triumph, and Chapple-Hyam reckons there’s more to come.

“He improved a fair bit over the winter, he’s more mature, he’s stronger,” she says. “Life is pretty tough for a three-year-old sprinter going up against the older brigade, and that’s how it was for him last year.

“Now he’s got the advantage over the three-year-olds playing catch-up and he had a wind operation at the end of last year as well, helps him out a little in the last furlong of his races.”

That much was evident at Newmarket when Mill Stream, carrying the near-Nijinsky silks of former trainer Peter Harris, came through off a strong pace to get the job done in the closing stages.

He knew where he was going, having worked well over exactly the same strip of ground 10 days earlier, and he’ll know where he’s going in tomorrow’s Group 1 Prix Maurice de Gheest given his familiarity with the straight track at Deauville, where he is unbeaten in two starts.

“The Maurice de Gheest was always the main goal for the year,” says Chapple-Hyam. “So what a nice bonus the July Cup was.

“After that it’ll be the Sprint Cup at Haydock and the Champions Sprint at Ascot. He won’t go to Del Mar for the Breeders’ Cup because the turf sprint is over five furlongs - he’s a six-furlong horse, but I’m not too worried about the extra half-furlong at Deauville, which is a flat track.

Stay in training

“The plan is for him to stay in training next year, with maybe the big sprint in Hong Kong for the end of his campaign. It’ll be great to have him around a bit longer.”

That’ll thwart the stallion men for a while, although Chapple-Hyam continues the sales pitch, the Aussie appetite for a shrewd deal well to the fore. If she was writing Mill Stream’s Tinder profile, they’d all be swiping right.

“He’s super consistent, very laid-back, very chilled, not coltish,” she says, possibly wondering whether to put in ‘non-smoker’, ‘good sense of humour’ and ‘looking for brief but fulfilling relationship with 150 females a year’.

“He’s just a good-looking dude, a perfect gentleman, straightforward with no quirks, which is unusual for a sprinter.”

Knows good horse

Be in no doubt that Chapple-Hyam knows a good horse when she sees one. She has trained plenty, lighting up her second year with a licence with 100/1 boilover Ebor Handicap winner Mudawin, then moving up with multiple Group winner Mull Of Killough, and later hitting the big time with superstar filly Saffron Beach, who gave Chapple-Hyam her first introduction to the bliss of Group 1 glory in the Sun Chariot Stakes and the Prix Rothschild.

But observant readers - always a tricky bunch to please - will be wondering about the string of star names at the top of the page.

If Mill Stream tells you where Chapple-Hyam is now, that lip-smacking list of luminaries explains where she came from. To stretch the bloodstock analogy to the snapping point, her page is blacktype all the way down.

Leilani was the baptism, the 1974 Caulfield Cup winner and Melbourne Cup runner-up owned by her high-rank politician father Andrew Peacock, the filly such a favourite of trainer Bart ‘Cups King’ Cummings that he named his yard in her honour. Chapple-Hyam remembers being an eight-year-old with a pocketful of carrots, visiting the fabulous family pet.

Then there was 1980 Melbourne Cup winner Beldale Ball, owned by her stepfather Robert Sangster. There is a famous photograph taken in Maxim’s restaurant in Melbourne on race-night of her mother Susan dancing on the table with the Cup held high, while Peacock and Sangster look on approvingly, a few drinks almost certainly taken. Did you dance on the table after Mill Stream, Jane?

“No, not me,” she says, with amusement. “I wouldn’t be brave enough. Anyway, I’ve got two left feet.”

Not long after that Chapple-Hyam did the ten-pound-Pom thing in reverse (ten-dollar-Sheila?) and shipped to Britain at the age of 17, parlaying a course in stud management at the National Stud into a role at the lavish Manton training complex then owned by Sangster.

She worked for Michael Dickinson and Barry Hills and then with Peter Chapple-Hyam, and was trainer’s wife, work-rider and assistant during the early 1990s golden years of Rodrigo De Triano, Dr Devious, Spectrum, Balanchine and all the rest.

So if there had been any doubt in her mind - or anyone else’s - about what sort of future the past had been constructing, it was removed in the process of the Chapple-Hyams’ return to Britain from a difficult and not notably successful stint training in Hong Kong.

With her marriage beyond repair, she made the obvious but nevertheless plucky move to begin a new life as a new trainer.

“I thought about going to train in Australia, but not for long,” she says. “If I’d gone there I’d have had to start from scratch, right at the bottom.

“But I knew the English system, knew how everything worked, and I could just get on with things under my own steam. In my second year Mudawin came along and every year since I’ve had a decent horse or two.”

Chapple-Hyam pithily shrugs off the possibility of any little local difficulty associated with training in the same town as her ex-husband - “Not a problem. It’s a friendly place and people get on well” - while, despite her preference for working in England, making it plain that her heart still belongs to Australia.

She has been known to fly the Southern Cross from her yard, was proud to provide accommodation for the invincible (just) Black Caviar when the mare travelled over for Royal Ascot in 2012, and when it comes to the wider world of sport - tennis being a particular favourite - there’s only one winner.

“Apart from the time in Hong Kong, I’ve spent my whole adult life over here,” she says. “But I still have an Australian passport, and I’m still an Australian citizen, and I still cheer for Australia in all sports.

“When England play, of course, I’m happy to support them. But when the two clash, there’s only one team for me.”

She’d fail the old, wrongheaded ‘Tebbit test’, but anyone muttering puce-faced about divided loyalties should consider her remarks on another sport - horse racing.

Problems

It is only too easy to point out the problems that continue to beset British racing and easier still to laud the situation in Australia, where the off-course betting model contributes to a far healthier financial picture, with all the corollary benefits. Chapple-Hyam won’t take that bait.

“People say that the UK is getting it all wrong at the moment, and look at France, Hong Kong and, yes, Australia,” she says.

“But I don’t go down that road. British racing isn’t perfect by any means, but I’m here, it’s my home, I love British racing. I do take its problems on board, but look, there’s a strong residual value attached to racing in Britain and not everything has to be about prize money.”

Fair-minded, logical and loyal, Chapple-Hyam is a good sort to have on your side, whichever side that might be.

Ask her, though, about her greatest ambition and she comes out all green-and-gold again, the question a blatant set-up. She’d like to win the Derby, of course she would, but a Melbourne girl always wants to win the Melbourne Cup above all else.

“All Aussies want to win it, not just me, but you have to find the right horse. The right horse and the right owners - I love to travel with my horses but you have to have an owner who likes to travel too,” she says.

“It’s always in the back of my mind as I sit and wait for the right one to come along. It hasn’t yet, but one day it might.”

Yellowstone, in 2008, might have been the right one but she never had the chance to find out, the horse making the final field before being withdrawn on the day before the race owing to a persistent issue with his hip.

The local stewards had the final call, a condition that occasionally vexes would-be British raiders but one with which the clear-thinking Chapple-Hyam characteristically finds little fault.

“They have a good system. I know that it can lead to disappointment along the way now and again, but every country has its own rules and we all have to abide by them.”

One day the right one with the right stuff might indeed come along. It certainly won’t be Mill Stream, although he has done his bit already and may yet do more, but you never know with a two-year-old and Chapple-Hyam likes her juveniles this year, picking out Newbury runner-up Boxtel, Ascot sixth Echalar and the unraced Hard Endeavour as names to conjure with. It is to Mill Stream, though, that she returns.

Boost confidence

“It’s what the yard needed, it really helps to boost our confidence,” she says. “Of course it’s a team effort, all my wonderful staff, an owner like Peter who understands horses so well, it all adds up to a great deal of job satisfaction.

“It was a great day, made even better by training Asian Daze to win earlier on the card for [legendary Australian trainer] Gai Waterhouse. It was a one-off, Asian Daze has just got on a plane and will race for Gai now, but it was a big thrill and an honour to train a winner for her.

“I’ve got 50 horses here and I really appreciate having one like Mill Stream. Horses like him, like Saffron Beach, are very special and you really miss them when they’re not there. But he’ll be around for a while longer and there’s a lot to look forward to.”

Chapple-Hyam has a minor reputation as a major ante-post punter, having cleaned out the bookies once upon a time with a Guineas-Derby double on Rodrigo De Triano and Dr Devious and a little - and you’d only need a little, wouldn’t you - of the early 150/1 about Mudawin before the Ebor.

It’s a safe ante-post bet, money in the bank, Aussie dollars or British sterling, that Mill Stream will not be the last entry on that list of exalted big-name, big-race performers; just business as usual for Jane Chapple-Hyam.