Obituary: Michael Jarvis, successful racehorse trainer who was known as a ‘true gentleman of the turf’

The racing world was still in shock over the news of Red Rum trainer Donald “Ginger” McCain’s death when the announcement came that veteran Newmarket trainer Michael Jarvis had died only a day afterwards.

Jarvis was one of the finest trainers of racehorses on the flat in Britain in recent decades. Though he never enjoyed the vast equine resources of other top trainers, he managed to win two Classics and Europe’s top race, the Prix de L’Arc de Triomphe, and punters respected him hugely because his horses were always known to be trying to win.

Furthermore, he was renowned as a genuinely kind and self-effacing family man, and the Newmarket community in particular is bereft at the passing of a very popular figure.

Jarvis was always destined for a racing life as the son of jumps jockey Andrew from Lewes in Sussex. Jarvis, too, started out as a jumps jockey, riding three winners for the legendary Ryan Price. Avoiding national service due to asthma, he became a groom, first for Towser Gosden and then Gordon Smyth, attending to the latter’s Charlottetown, winner of the 1966 Epsom Derby.

In 1968 the Radio Rentals tycoon David Robinson was looking for a couple of private trainers for his establishment at Carlsburg House in Newmarket and selected Jarvis. He had immediate success for Robinson before branching out on his own, eventually taking over the famous Kremlin House stables in Headquarters, as Newmarket is known in racing.

He won the Haydock Sprint three times with Tudor Music (1969), Green God (1971) and Petong (1984). Beldale Flutter won the Dante and International Stakes at York (1981) while Easter Sun won the Coronation Cup of 1982.

There is no doubt about Jarvis’s single greatest achievement. In 1989, his long-term strategy for the four-year-old colt Carroll House paid off spectacularly with the securing of Europe’s biggest prize.

As a three-year-old, Jarvis had taken the classy-looking chestnut colt to France, Germany and Italy to give him experience of racing abroad, and gained several Group One prizes on the way. In his final outing before the Arc, Carroll House showed he could be a contender by winning the Irish Champion Stakes before heading to Longchamp for the Arc on 8 October, 1989.

Jeremy Tree and Guy Harwood having won the Arc in previous years, Jarvis was trying to make it a British treble in the 1980s, but the French racing public made home hope In The Wings the favourite. With Epsom Derby winner Nashwan having retired to stud, Jarvis was quietly confident, and thought the Parisian odds of nearly 19-1 somewhat generous.

Carroll House had the assistance of the great Irish jockey Mick Kinane, winning the first of his three Arcs, all of them 10 years apart (Montjeu in 1999 and Sea The Stars in 2009 being the others). He managed to settle the colt on the outside of the field and came with a devastating run in the home straight to win by a length and a half. Jarvis and all his British fans at Longchamp had to hold their breath until after a stewards’ inquiry, as the colt had crossed in front of second-placed Behera but the result stood.

After a lean period in the 1990s, it was no wonder that Jarvis cited his most pleasurable successes as his late Classic victories, the 1,000 Guineas of 2001 with Ameerat and the 2005 Oaks with Eswarah. These were gained respectively for Sheikh Aqhmed and Sheikh Hamdan of Dubai’s reigning al-Maktoum family, his strongest supporters over the years.

Jarvis was meticulous race planner, a talent which earned him the big handicap prizes he regularly plundered such as the Bunbury Cup, which he won four times. Probably his best training feat, however, was to get the brilliant but temperamental Rakti onto the racecourse to win five Group 1 races from 2003 to 3005.

A true gentleman of the turf, Jarvis was never one to blow his own trumpet, and his unflappable character and patience were by-words in racing. He was a pioneer in that he saw the potential for British horses to compete abroad and win major prizes, and a large haul of major Group wins in Italy and Germany proved the wisdom of that strategy. He also won a French Derby with Holding Court in 2000.

Jarvis was diagnosed with prostate cancer at the beginning of that decade but he did his best to downplay his health problems in later life, and indeed he had a late flourishing in his career, training more than 100 winners in a season for the first time in 2008.

He appeared to have beaten the disease until its return two years ago. He also had a heart valve replaced and eventually in February this year he announced his retirement due to ill health, handing over the reins at Kremlin House to his assistant Roger Varian, who has made fine start to his career.

Jarvis is survived by his wife Gay, who he married in 1987, and his three daughters, Sarah, Lisa and Jaclyn, to whom he was devoted.