Follow Your Leader: The memoir of a Newmarket trainer

The fifty-year career of Gavin Pritchard-Gordon in Newmarket, the Headquarters of British Racing, proved to be as exciting a ride as those provided by his many winning horses. This caught the author as much by surprise as anyone else. The opportunity to train racehorses was offered to Pritchard-Gordon somewhat out of the blue by the legendary trainer Harvey Leader.
Pritchard-Gordon grabbed at the chance to follow in Mr Leader’s footsteps. He never looked back as a life in Racing took him to many a Winners’ Enclosure and the country’s grandest houses, all the while having great fun with the top names of Racing, past and present.

Foreword by Brough Scott

“A stylish homage to Newmarket this memoir is deliciously indiscreet, full of humorous anecdotes that will make the reader laugh out loud. It cleverly exposes some of racing’s shibboleths while retaining the author’s innate decency and humanity. A must read for the racing aficionado.”
Author and journalist Colin Mackenzie.

About the author:
Racing has been Gavin Pritchard-Gordon’s life, ever since he first came to Newmarket in 1966 to be a pupil trainer with the greatly respected Harvey Leader – one of the very few people to have trained both a Classic and a Grand National winner. He spent similar spells as Assistant to Peter Walwyn in Lambourn, and Stuart Murless, on the Curragh, before returning to Newmarket, and taking over the trainer’s license from Harvey Leader, at Shalfleet, in 1972.
The best horses Pritchard-Gordon trained on the Flat were Group 1 winners Noalcoholic, Ardoon and Record Run – but one of his most exciting moments came when King Pele, ridden by the intrepid David Nicholson, triumphed in the Gloucester Hurdle (now the Sun Alliance) at the Cheltenham Festival in 1973.
Pritchard-Gordon stopped training in 1995, spending a year at BHB in Portman Square before becoming Chief Executive of the Thoroughbred Breeders Association In Newmarket. He held that position for fourteen years, prior to being appointed Executive Chairman of British Bloodstock Marketing, and then retiring in 2010. Since then Pritchard-Gordon has remained closely involved with all aspects of the Racing and Breeding Industry worldwide.

Read more