PROFILE
In eight years with a licence, Guillermo Arizkorreta has been Spain’s champion trainer three times and has his sights set on a prime international target.
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WORDS AND PHOTOS: EMMA BERRY
UST minutes from the centre of Madrid sits Hipodromo de La Zarzuela, the busiest racecourse in Spain in every sense of the word, including being a base for 33 trainers and around 80 per cent of the country’s racehorses. The track lay closed and abandoned for a decade from 1996 and its reopening eight years ago brought with it the return from England of a young Spaniard who was set to take the domestic training ranks by storm. Now 39, Guillermo Arizkorreta has been champion trainer in Spain for the last three seasons. With six Classic victories to his name – including both the Spanish Derby and Oaks in 2013 – and 65 horses in his care, he is at the head of the country’s largest racing stable. Not that you’d know it if you met him. Modest and self-effacing, Arizkorreta, despite his youth, is very much an old-school trainer. He doesn’t have a website and isn’t tempted by the self-promotional opportunities of Twitter or Facebook, although he may soon have to give in to the urgings of his wife Mila on this subject. Within the tight-knit Spanish racing community, the former champion amateur rider was already widely known before he set up his training business at the end of 2006 and his almost instant success in that sphere has provided its own advertisement. “I’ve been lucky,” he says, typically quick to deflect praise at the speed of his ascent. “People knew me from when I was riding – I won the amateur championship two or three times as a rider so they knew my name. The people here also knew I had experience working for different trainers in England and Ireland and I was lucky to get owners quickly, then the results came.” A native of San Sebastian in the Basque Country, Arizkorreta was educated at a French school in northern Spain and added English to his list of languages by spending summers riding out in Newmarket for Henry Cecil and David Cosgrove, and for Con Collins in Ireland. A short stint with his French-based compatriot Carlos Laffon-Parias also formed part of his racing education which was honed during five years as pupil assistant and then assistant to Luca Cumani. “My family is not involved in horses or racing
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