Return of the Newmarket prodigal

Royal Ascot – Exile in Evry has reawakened the craving for Loder, the one-time wonder boy of training

If ever a man will be delighted to suffer in the sun in fancy dress at Royal Ascot this week, it is David Loder. It is not so much that it is three years since he last welcomed one of the horses in his care into the winner's circle at Europe's richest race meeting, it is that he has been denied the opportunity to bring his gifts to the party. But the frustration is now over; topper, morning suit and a team of crack two-year-olds are brushed and ready.

Loder, 37, has been one of the sport's hottest young properties since he took out a licence at the end of 1992, after learning his trade with Sir Mark Prescott and Geoff Wragg in Newmarket. Success came quickly; his first list of patrons included Sheikh Mohammed and in four years his original 40-strong string had trebled in size. He seemed to do particularly well with youngsters ­ Blue Duster, Bianca Nera, Lujain, Bahamian Bounty and Embassy all won Group One contests ­ but there were plenty of high-class older horses.

Accomplishment and expansion, though, brought pressure and Loder admits he came close to cracking. He grabbed with both hands the offer from Mohammed, then in the process of widening the boundaries of his Godolphin operation, to bale out of Newmarket and head up the revolutionary new two-year-old academy at Evry, on the outskirts of Paris.

"Despite all those good horses and all those wins, I thought seriously about giving up," Loder said. "I was driving myself too hard. We had more than 100 horses split between Sefton Lodge and other little yards, a logistical nightmare. We were playing in the big league without being geared up to the big league. And when the opportunity came to go to France, I was glad to leave."

The Evry experiment, despite City On A Hill in the first season and Noverre last year, was, by any standards, a failure. But the Godolphin ethos tends to be that a pace back is the automatic spur to 10 forward and normal service has been resumed, with knobs on.

"There was a combination of reasons why it didn't work," said Loder. "We didn't really have the right horses; the project was about supplying the Godolphin A-team but Noverre was our only good one last year. And it wasn't easy to make a horse in France. The training facilities at Evry were more suitable for older horses than two-year-olds. The gallops weren't as true as they are in Newmarket, so you were left guessing to a certain extent. And in France the programme structure is different. The best horses could run at the Paris tracks, but there's not a Redcar or a Leicester for the lesser ones, so we never had many runners."

Having been glad to turn his back on the goldfish bowl of Newmarket, Loder soon began marking off the days until his return. He has come back leaner and fitter (literally; he has shed several stone and stopped smoking) less defensive, more relaxed. The hunger to train winners is still there but wearing the team shirt without the captain's armband has lifted a weight from his shoulders.

Loder's family name has been part of Newmarket lore for a century, since the time when his great-grand-father's brother Eustace raced the legendary Pretty Polly. His domain is a horseshoe's throw from where the great filly was stabled; at what was Stanley House and is now Godolphin Stables he has a squad of 100 juveniles and a platoon of trusted lieutenants.

"Two-year-olds are a joy," said their trainer, who might have been headmaster of a prep school in a parallel universe. "They have a fresh innocence. Everything is a learning curve for them, and it is up to you to take them where you want and keep them confident and enjoying it all. If you ask them something they generally do it, because they don't know any better, whereas the older horses are sometimes not sure whether it's all as much fun as it used to be.

"The great thing about Newmarket, as opposed to a private facility, is that they get to see everything, hundreds of other horses every day, cars, lorries, people. That educates their minds and the canters and gallops here ­ which, after all, have been proven for centuries ­ channel them as athletes. It's just a fun place to be back in. It's a community; you see people every day, join in the banter and I think it's fair to say there's a competitive edge between the trainers, which is never a bad thing."

The Godolphin horses, immaculately turned out with riders in matching royal blue and horses with spotless pale leg-wraps, are a fine (if, for other yards, daunting) sight on dawn patrol on Newmarket Heath. And of the 11 colts and fillies Loder has sent out so far, only two have failed to win.

Nice big backward types are all very well, but they tend to mature only in time for the Triumph Hurdle. The selection of auction purchases was tightened up at last autumn's yearling sales, when Loder was able to add his two dirhams' worth to the views of the Sheikh, his bloodstock adviser John Ferguson and the others at the sharp end. "The more eyes the better," he said."We all like a slightly different type and I hope we've ended up with a balanced portfolio which will get the stream who will graduate from my nursery back on line."

Loder will have four juvenile runners this week: Meshaheer in the Coventry Stakes on Tuesday, Latin Lynx in the Queen Mary Stakes and Seba in the Chesham Stakes on Wednesday and Steadfast And True in the Windsor Castle Stakes on Friday. A victory or two and his rehabilitation will be complete.

"With two-year-olds, you're a prospector, looking for that seam of gold," he said, "and if you want to find that nth degree, you need the facilities and the back up. Sheikh Mohammed here and Coolmore in Ireland have taken the game to an extraordinary level. We did have some lingering doubts, after France. But what we're doing now, this is what it was supposed to be and I am just happy to be part of it."