By - Robbgomm

The Nominees:

FERNANDO

The Spaniard is the trainer of Stormy Prospector, a nomination for Turf Male Of The Year. Stormy Prospector is a brilliant horse, earning over $10,000,000 in a career that includes a Breeders' Cup Classic win. In 2002 Fernando had runners in 176 races gaining 39 wins with 134 runners in the money. He earned over $2,000,000 (with an average of $11,000 per start) and he had 19 stakes winners. Ferprival, African For Pro and Sarahs Blues were some of Fernando's best horses last year, winning stakes races. Fernando is one of the SIM's all-time top trainers (ranked sixth) and has been playing since the beginning of Mike Wallaces' adventure.

GORYTUS

At the end of 2002, Gorytus was ranked the number one stable based on wins. He trained an outstanding 75 winners from 325 races. Earnings of over $1,500,000 ($4,789) show that his horses have kept themselves in barns. Gorytus has bred hundreds of horses including Mimieux who has won eight of his 14 races. Teaplanter won six allowance races in a row last year and Michelle Pfeiffer is a consistent colt who recently won a stakes race. Gorytus, who has been playing for over two years, is a frequent winner of starter allowances.

LASTHOPE

Focuses, with success, on stakes winners - there were 11 of them for Lasthope last year. 10th best trainer (on wins) in SIM history, the win strike rate of 30% and ITM strike rate of 83% show how consistent Lasthope's horses are. One of the best moments of 2002 was the Breeders' Bowl Sprint win of Barely That Auggie. His brilliant late run saw him take the win by half-a-length with a speed figure of 125. Blowing Under Quest was a GI winner last year having been claimed several years ago.

TOPLIGHT

Number three (on wins) SIM trainer in history. He joined the SIM in 1997 and is a stakes trainer. He won 32 races in 2002 and 21 of those were stakes races. Training Cecil Roo, one of the best mares ever to have raced in the SIM, to win the Derby De English and the Arc De Triumph have made Toplight a SIM wide name. Eight-year-old Again Of The Dance is still able to win stakes races and has a record of 31 wins from 90 races. Toplight is the highest earning trainer there's been in the SIM, making $15,670,272.

RACELORD - 2002 TRAINER OF THE YEAR

"I don't consider myself as a trainer of the year candidate for 2002." Tough, you've won. Racelord - who also runs Lasthope stable - is the only SIM trainer ever to have won 200 races. 201 to be exact. You'd better believe this too - the second winningmost trainer is Sabbath with 188 wins. Racelord runs that stable too! High Cozzene (2000) and Saddle Tetecate (2002) have provided Racelord with wins in the Equinics.

Racelord had a rough start to his racing career. It started in Sweden many moons ago. He was 15-years-old and starting a career working for an average Swedish trainer. The trainer, his name can not be published as he's currently involved in a legal trial, made Racelord sleep in a barn with a tempremental horse called Kreteson. The nights were not comfortable as he remembers,"The horse used to sleep blocking his barn door. If he woke up and felt like stretching his legs, he'd kick out, leaving me to cower under some straw in the corner of the barn. He never once bit me and we ended up getting on quite well. We shared a barn for about a year. I never paid him rent."

Racelord was given a jockeys licence and rode his first winner as a 17-year-old. He went on to ride more than 12 winners in a less than glittering riding career that spanned five years. He puts this down to his trainer,"Because I didn't get a proper nights sleep for all my time at the barn, I was never awake enough to ride a horse. I fell off of about 15% of my rides. They probably called me a nickmame or two but I don't remember." His riding career - the pinnacle of which was a win in a maiden race on a 100/1 shot - finished at 22 when a doctor told him "your as concussed as a punching bag and twice as ugly". The falls had left their mark, mainly in his mouth as you will be able to tell. Racelord has lost most of his teeth but is too busy training to replace them.

The natural move from riding was training. He was an immediate! success. In his first season he won 20 races with a stable of just eight horses. They weren't good horses, but Racelord got them winning. A Swedish reporter once said,"This man should not be training in Sweden, he's got to go international." Racelord spent three seasons training in Sweden. He won the Swedish Derby and Oaks twice each, the Swedish 2000 Guineas once and trained 94 winners. He moved to England where he trained in Newmarket from the age of 27 until he was 40. In those seasons he became a legend winning all of the Classics in England. Training Black And White was his best achievement. "She was a skinny two-year-old when I bought her at the end of the season. She'd had 14 races and won once - her first start, a maiden. She'd been dropped in class time after time but kept getting beaten. I saw something special. Her first run for me was in a trial for the 1000 Guineas at Newmarket. She started 250/1 and wonby three-lengths. All we did was change her diet and rarely gallop her. She was roughly treated as a juvenile. Winning the 1000 Guineas would have been unthinkable before that trial - she'd have started 1000/1. In five months we turned her around, giving her the occasional hard work out whilst building her muscle up through swimming. She liked to run hard when she raced and liked a month or so between races."

Black And White lined up for the 1000 Guineas at Newmarket as a 12/1 shot, most regarding the trial as a fluke. She proved them wrong easily - winning by five-lengths and not losing again that season. "She won the Oaks for us and also the King George and the Arc - she was best at 12 furlongs although won at seven. We didn't race her much as a four-year-old but she won all her three starts - a small stakes, the King George again and then she won the Arc again. But she broke a bone in her leg in her box after getting worked up in a storm. She was all right a year or so later but we didn't race her again."

When he was 40, Racelord quit England. "I had! no option. I'd been using this guy named Liam to translate for me. I couldn't speak clear English, or make out what anyone else was saying." Racelord had never learnt the language because he spent all his time with the horses. "Liam was also my assistant trainer but he went to America, I followed him." Racelord wasn't to train again for 10 years. He learnt fluent English and worked as a stable hand for Liam, who'd set up as a trainer in California. "I liked the quiet life but I had the urge to train. I took out a licence and started training under the name Racelord. The name emerged when some Irish jockey said I was the lord at winning races - he wasn't the most witty - but I put two and two together and called myself Racelord."

Racelord started training in America in the late 90's. He was soon a King. He trained the most winners in the SIM world in 2000 (62) and 2001 (64). "I found it more competitive than Sweden and England. In England I trained 100 winners a season for five years in a row, the last five I spent in the country before moving over here. I couldn't do that here but I was hammering in the stakes." In 2000 he trained 26 winners, not the most that year. He vowed change and pushed for more wins. "I trained 42 stakes winners in 2001 (19 more than anyone else) and was named Eclipse Trainer Of The Year."

2002 saw Racelord pass the 200 winner mark for his career in the US. He's been resident all over the place and even has a satellite barn in Scandanavia. A two time winner of the Viking Racing Championship, a EURO Championship winner once (second too) and ASR Championship winner, Racelord has had an outstanding training career.

Racelord's stable had a tougher time in 2002, breeding some bad class horses and struggling for barn space. Training his 200th winner and winning the BB Sprint with Lasthope stable have kept him going,"We had plenty of winners overall but not so much prestige as I like. Saddle Tetecate's Eclipse win was brilliant, we've won at both Equinics n! ow and that makes me proud. We've not claimed or bred so many nice one's over the last year but High Cozzene keeps going and so does Bustfully Not Raul.

Racelord stands alone as the winningmost trainer in SIM history. The Swede is popular too, although he's more concentrated on his horses,"The horses are good to me and I to them." Racelord is the Eclipse Trainer Of The Year for 2002 - will he be first to get to 300 winners,"If i'm not, then whoever is can call themselves Racelord."