‘I’ve had some good touches but I gamble in business now’ - meet the four-horse trainer who has packed it all into his 80 years

David Carr spoke to colourful trainer Ray Craggs for this interview, first published exclusively for Racing Post Members' Club subscribers.

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You really ain't seen nothing yet. If you thought Ray Craggs winning a £70,000 race at York with Ron O, a 28-1 shot who was only his third runner at the track in 30 years, was a surprise, you should spend some time with him.

Craggs is not the sort to blow his own trumpet, or even risk the odd puff into his piccolo, and time and again he stresses he does not want to sound big-headed.

But the self-professed part-time trainer – he currently oversees four horses – has packed an astonishing amount into his 80 years, starting from nothing, yet now owning nine farms and a contracting business.

Spending a few hours in the company of a man who has never previously allowed a journalist in, is to hear fascinating tales of firework disaster and Lester Piggott confusion, victories over bank managers and business associates, and the reason you no longer hear about lorries jack-knifing on the traffic news.

All this and more is revealed with increasing relish on "the greenest farm in Europe", three or four miles along the A689 from Sedgefield racecourse, where our hero has spent all of those eight decades.

Newmarket this ain't. A drive to the gallop takes in stops at huge storage barns holding various products, distillers grain or spelt wheat – that last is processed into award-winning spelt flour, with the discarded husks used to fuel the boilers so there is no need for diesel to dry the grain.

The one-mile gallop itself is another triumph of innovation, the wonderfully springy and resilient result of arduous trial-and-error mixing of sand, fibre and other secret ingredients which Craggs tells me has one Group 1-winning jockey wishing it could be transported to Malton.

“It’s just basic but it works and I don't know of one better," says Craggs, whose own career as a jockey was short. “I rode GRB in a two-and-half-mile hurdle race at Newcastle, the Mallard Handicap, when I was 16," he recalls. "It was a £400 race, a lot of money in those days.

Ray Craggs: spelt wheat is processed into award-winning spelt flourCredit: John Grossick (racingpost.com/photos)

"Gerry Scott [a leading jockey] was injured but he was at the races with a crutch. My dad found him and asked him to tell me how to ride this race. He said to stick at the back, so I was last of 28 runners coming round the bottom bend. I finished seventh and they all said, ‘Where the hell did you come from?' If I’d been experienced I could have won it.

“I think that was my one ride. You got no money in those days and I had to start work.”

That meant contracting, farming, crop spraying and hard work.

“I used to do a lot of dock work and I still do – when British Steel was going we were unloading ships 24 hours a day, seven days a week, non-stop even on Christmas Day," he recalls.

Getting the money you need to invest is never easy when you are starting from nothing and Craggs says: “What do you do when you’ve got nowt? I remember a bank manager wouldn’t lend me the money for a new wagon; he said I was struggling. I said that’s right but I’ve got to get cracking. So I went somewhere else.

"Four or five months later I was in the club in Sedgefield and I was all dressed up, new suit, new shirt, new shoes, and I knew he’d be in. We went outside and he said, ‘You seem very affluent, Ray,’ and I said, 'That’s the fruition of what you turned me down for, you so-and-so.'”

Craggs is not the sort of man to take no for an answer, even when one company was telling him it would not be possible to build the new trailer he had designed.

"One young draughtsman piped up and said, ‘I think he’s right,'" recalls Craggs, who went on to set up his own firm building trailers with that draughtsman.

Cue an animated five minutes of drawing on the kitchen table, illustrating the advantages of his revolutionary designs, watched on admiringly by wife Angela – still smiling at a tale she has heard plenty of times in 57 years of marriage.

That is followed by a period of mourning for a firm rendered uneconomic by government subsidies to trailer businesses in Northern Ireland.

"I lost a lot of good men and I had tears in my eyes when it had to close," says Craggs, who also uses pen and pad to show how he ended accidents, delays and worse by putting an air valve on trailers to stop articulated lorries from jack-knifing.

Knighthoods have been awarded for less, although Craggs says: “It’s not rocket science. I only have one eye but I don’t miss much.”

That ocular deficiency dates back to the coronation celebrations for Queen Elizabeth II in 1953.

"There was a firework display outside the church," Craggs recalls. "I was stood in the front row and a rocket went right up my sleeve and into my eye. My dad picked me up and carried me to the doctor's. I wasn't meant to be at the fireworks and I was all wrapped up, so my dad didn't know it was me at first.

“I had two operations but they couldn’t save the sight in my eye. I had nine months in hospital, I missed a lot of school and failed my 11-plus, but that was a waste of time anyway."

Lack of academic prowess certainly did not hold back a business career which flourished to the extent that Craggs was able to indulge his love for racing and become an owner – which caused a confusion of his two major interests when the most famous jockey of all phoned up for a mount.

Craggs recounts: "He said, 'It's Lester, I want to ride your horse,' but I couldn't understand him and I thought it was someone with a load from Leicester and I told him to ring Fergusons of Blyth!"

Nobody familiar with his business career should be surprised that Craggs eventually decided to try to train his horses himself, with daughter Nicola riding them.

“There were lots of reasons but I’d been round stable yards and seen what they were feeding the horses on," he explains. "They’d say, ‘Come and see my good hay, Ray,’ and I wouldn’t feed cattle on it. So I thought I’d have a go."

And having only six horses did not stop him wanting to emulate the best.

“Henry Cecil was my idol," he says. "When I first started, I went to his saddler and asked him to send to me all the same bits that he sent to him. I remember there was a ‘W’ you put in a horse’s mouth to stop their tongue going over the bit and Knotty Hill won using it. The stewards asked me about it at Southwell and I said, ‘If it’s good enough for Henry Cecil, it’s good enough for me.’”

His first winner as a trainer, lovingly inscribed in green calligraphy in a personalised record book, was the hurdler Superhoo down the road at Sedgefield in November 1994, although as time went on he increasingly focused on the Flat. Indeed, he has not had any runners at all over jumps since the 2020-21 season, during which time he achieved a career-best tally of nine winners on the Flat in 2022, followed by five last year and two more this term.

Ray Craggs's first winner was SuperhooCredit: John Grossick (racingpost.com/photos)

He says: “It’s too hard on the horses, the injuries. With this Flat job, if you’ve got something half decent you can make it pay without costing a fortune in vets’ bills."

Cue a chat about Flat star Ron O, the six-year-old currently standing on the vibrating platform in a yard which shows yet again how his trainer is always applying his mind to try to get ahead.

"That machine is good for the circulation. If they’ve got a bad joint or a bit of stiffness it gets the blood flowing,” says Craggs, who looks at the boxes and adds: "The floors have insulation in them and they’re never wet. I don’t know why people don’t do it. When a horse lays down the floor gets warmer; because it’s insulated the body heat can’t disperse through the concrete.”

That recent York winner Ron O has been benefiting from the mod cons at East Close Farm since 2022 and his trainer explains: “Mike Rozenbroek is a good friend of mine and I’d bought three horses off him before. 

"He said he had this horse and he wanted ten grand for him. I said I trusted him, I wouldn’t come and see it and I said I’d give him eight grand for it, and another four when it wins its first race."

You don't spend as long in business as Craggs has without being able to negotiate a good deal and Ron O has now won eight times and earned nearly £83,000 in prize-money.

“He’s not a Group horse but he’s genuine," Craggs says. "I was hoping he’d get placed at York. I’d have been over the moon with that."

He didn't take any of that 28-1, saying: “I used to bet on horses but I don’t now. I’ve had some good touches but I gamble in business now. I’ve seen too many people lose their house, their farm, their wives, the lot and I always remember that."

Ray Craggs with his 28-1 York winner Ron OCredit: John Grossick (racingpost.com/photos)

But the obvious next target for an improving 1m2f winner is not available. Craggs says: “I was speaking to the boss man William Derby afterwards and I said what about the John Smith’s Cup, but he said it’s already closed. The trouble is I’m not used to looking at early-closing races. I’m normally looking at 0-55s and 0-65s!"

Craggs has no desire to get more familiar with the programme book by expanding his string, though. "I'm very minimalist,” he says. “It doesn’t take up too much of my time, I only have one member of staff – I’m a farmer who does it as a hobby."

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