‘It’s pants’: Lucy Normile quits racing and fears other trainers will follow

Only a valedictory tweet on Tuesday night alerted followers of racing to the fact that Lucy Normile’s training career had reached a sudden end. For 20 years, the Scot has managed to make her business work from a rural corner of Perthshire but the economic troubles caused by the coronavirus crisis have proved the final straw.

Granite City Doc was her final runner, coming agonisingly close to providing her with a fitting send-off when beaten a length at Newcastle on Saturday. Alas, he was one of just four horses Normile had to run in Flat races this summer, prompting her to call time.

“Realistically, it’s not enough,” she reflected on Wednesday. “You can keep papering over the cracks for a little bit longer here and there but at the end of the day I’ve got kids and you just have to go, hang on a minute, we need to be realistic. I’m never going to have the big numbers and the big-paying owners that you need, unfortunately.”

It is not as though she has quit the game for some more tempting opportunity. Asked what she’ll do next, Normile responds: “That’s the worst of it, everybody’s been asking that and I genuinely have no idea. There’s till horses here, mares and foals and youngsters, but realistically I just don’t know.”

Racing folk have tried to focus on the positives since the sport was allowed to return last week but there is a widespread feeling that some business may not recover, which Normile shares.

“I think it’ll get worse. You try and make do and some owners have been amazingly supportive but the industry we’re in, yes, it’s our business, but it’s a leisure pursuit for a lot of people. And unless the economy picks up and flies again, there’s a lot of people who are not going to have the leisure money to be spending on racing.

“I think there’s a lot of small trainers that have been struggling along for years and this, unfortunately, might be the final nail in the coffin. Which is pants, really.”

Normile leaves, she insists, with no bitterness or regret. “None at all. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my time. I’m immensely proud of what we’ve achieved with horses that others would have turned down. We have needed those horses, we’ve won races with them. I’ve loved it but it’s hard work and it doesn’t get easier when you get older. Racing’s been very good to me for a long, long time.

“I’ve been so lucky, having had some brilliant staff. The highs outweigh the lows and we made a point of making sure we acknowledged all the winners because we knew they weren’t 10 a penny. We made sure to celebrate them and, as Arthur Stephenson once said, the little fish are sweetest. It’s the satisfaction of a job well done that’s probably best.”