Roger Varian aims for victory with first runner at the Breeders' Cup

There are legends at every turn on the back stretch at Churchill Downs, if not in the flesh then in the honour rolls on the barn walls which detail the achievements of former residents, and more famous faces arrive by the day ahead of the Breeders' Cup this weekend. Hall of Fame trainers like Bob Baffert, D Wayne Lukas and Nick Zito will saddle horses against the new generation of powerhouse handlers led by Todd Pletcher and Steve Asmussen, and such giants of European racing as Aidan O'Brien, Sir Henry Cecil and Sir Michael Stoute. But there are some less familiar names here too, who might yet prove to be champions themselves in time. Alan McCabe and Roger Varian, for instance, are both making their debuts at the Breeders' Cup this year, in Varian's case after just nine months with a licence, and both stand a good chance of joining the great names amid the ranks of Cup winners at the first attempt. The paths that brought them to Kentucky point have been quite different. McCabe started training at the bottom of the pile in July 2006, while Varian took over one of the country's best known yards, Kremlin House in Newmarket, when Michael Jarvis – who died in September – retired due to ill-health in February. They will go head to head in the Juvenile Turf on Saturday, when McCabe's Caspar Netscher takes on Varian's Farraaj, while Varian also sends Nahrain to Friday's Filly & Mare Turf, for which she could conceivably start as favourite. "Caspar Netscher is thriving," McCabe said on Tuesday. "He's eating well and drinking and he looks in really good shape. I rode the pony this morning and he had a good look around and enjoyed himself. Kieren [Fallon] has been booked to ride him and he's due here on Thursday, and will sit on him on Friday morning. "Horses like this don't come along very often. He came over on the plane with horses like Goldikova and Midday, and we're just grateful that we've got a horse that's good enough. He's shown that he's top class and he deserves to have a crack at this. He's always there and he never lets us down." The purse for Saturday's race is $1m (£630,000), but victory would mean much more than just a significant payday for a trainer who wants to prove he can compete with the best. "I've worked for some champion trainers," McCabe said. "I was lucky enough to work for David Elsworth, Noel Meade and then for Godolphin, and I've ridden horses like Desert Orchid, In The Groove, Indian Ridge, Rule Of Law and horses like that. I've been around good horses enough to know what we're about with them. "Looking at the form of the [Group One] Middle Park [in which Caspar Netscher suffered serious trouble in running], we'd beaten the second and third horses decisively when we'd met them, but that's racing and we came out of the race well and we're going to try again. When Robert [Winston, his jockey] came in, he said he should have won a minute, and he didn't handle the Dip too well either, which makes it all the more impressive how well he finished. "But the Middle Park was always going to be a prep for this race. The Breeders' Cup rules state that you have to have run 40 days before the race, or have had a public blowout, so we'll call that his public blowout." Varian too is relishing his first experience of the Breeders' Cup, in which his two runners have a chance to win more than £1m in prize money between them. "I was out with the horses this morning, they both stretched their legs on the track for the first time and behaved very well," Varian said. "It's very exciting to be here. I spent a little time in the States as a teenager on the west coast at Hollywood Park after I finished school, exercising horses on the track, so I know about the setup, but this is the first time I've been to a Breeders' Cup. "It's been a great season, we've had a solid year domestically with over 50 winners, and when Nahrain won [a Group One ] in Paris on Arc day that was the icing on the cake. It's just nice to be here with two horses that genuinely deserve their place in the lineup. "It was always the plan to go to the Racing Post Trophy at Doncaster with Farraaj, but he just wasn't quite 100% a week prior to the race. He came right back to himself the following week, and then all of a sudden this race became a possibility if his work was good, which it was. He had a clean scope and a clean blood, which gave us the green light to come out and have a go." Varian's first season with a licence has already been one of the most successful debuts in living memory, as the trainer has enjoyed a strike rate of nearly 20% by putting the right horses in the right races, much as his mentor, Michael Jarvis, used to do. "I owe him so much," Varian said. "He was a great man to work for, first and foremost, and to work with. He was as he came across, a true gentleman, but not just that, he was very good at what he did as well. I was really lucky to have had 10 years with him when he was training some really good horses, for the best owners. "If you did something wrong, he knew about it, he wasn't a complete pussycat, but he was very understanding that sometimes, shit happens, particularly with horses. He took it all in his stride and having had a year at it myself now, that seems all the more admirable. There are highs and lows but he took it all very evenly throughout, and that rubbed off on his staff and probably on the horses as well. "The yard set-up didn't change, the staff remained and a lot of us had been working together for a long time. Michael had a terrific record over 40 years, and if I'd gone in my first season training and changed things dramatically, I'd have needed my head looking at." Jarvis earned the respect of both punters and bookmakers over his long career for his shrewdness in placing his horses. Win or lose this weekend, Varian is evidence that the late trainer's judgment of people was just as acute.