Stronger For His Trials, Karl Burke Is Attracting The Bigger Players

THERE IS A 14 percent incline to work the engine as you drive the lane known as Hollins. It ascends the southern side of the lower Wensleydale valley in North Yorkshire, the River Ure at your back, the dominant shape of Penhill rising to the fore and extending its craggy-ridged way westward. Through a small wood the rising road bends, and there, off a sharp righthand turn, nestled in a sheltered nook below Middleham high moor, is Spigot Lodge, a tree-ringed haven from the dale’s biting winter winds. 

It is the home of Karl Burke, 61, whose fortunes have risen in recent years as obviously as that climbing lane from the valley floor. Like Hollins, his career and life have taken a turn or two along the way but still he keeps on going upward: bowel cancer shook him the year before last; it’s more than 15 years since the British Horseracing Authority (BHA) stripped away his licence; about 12 years since they gave it back; and in the time since, he has established a position as a Group 1, Classic-winning trainer, head of one of the most successful stables in northern England, and a burgeoning factor far beyond.

“It wasn’t very nice last year (with the cancer) and it all makes you appreciate when you have things taken off you, it makes you appreciate … you’re glad to get back to it,” Burke says. “And you never know what’s going on in your body, that’s what I learnt from it because I didn’t have a clue until a routine test. I feel great now and tests so far have all been good, so keep kicking on.”

He’s not long back from Dubai where Holloway Boy was third to Romantic Warrior in the G1 Jebel Hatta and he sits behind a large, busy desk in his office, the walls of which are covered in framed pictures of past triumphs. He kicked on to a career-best 121 wins in Britain last year, his fourth century in as many years. 

“We have 139 stables and they’re basically full,” he says. “We have 80 two-year-olds on the books and they’re the best bred, on paper, that we’ve had: they look the part as well. And we’ve literally just picked up five horses from Jaber Abdullah for the first time, so it keeps snowballing.

“I bumped into Jaber at the yearling sale last August. I never heard anything more until January time, then they contacted us and said there’s five coming over to you. They arrived this morning.”

There was a time when you’d struggle to find many high-profile Arab or Middle East-owned horses trained north of Newmarket, never mind in Burke’s locality of Middleham and Leyburn. Bill Watts, best known for training Lord Derby’s 1985 Arlington Million winner Teleprompter 10 or so miles to the north at Richmond, always had a handful of moderate achievers for Sheikh Mohammed, but it was when Burke’s Middleham neighbour Mark Johnston really took off in the 1990s that the Maktoum family and its Dubai-based affiliates began looking more seriously towards North Yorkshire.

Still, it took 20 years or more for those owners to spread their equine assets much beyond Johnston’s operation in these parts. 

Horses sporting the yellow silks, three black dots front and back, of Sheikh Mohammed Obaid al Maktoum have proliferated in North Yorkshire yards in recent seasons, more so since the owner split with Newmarket trainer Roger Varian: in 2024, Burke yielded 26 wins from 27 horses owned by Sheikh Mohammed Obaid, including Group 2 wins for Poet Master and Ice Max, Group 3s for Elite Status and Royal Rhyme, further stakes wins for Royal Champion, Bolster, Caviar Heights and Cuban Tiger, and Liberty Lane’s triumph in the prestigious Cambridgeshire handicap.

“I know the Dubai-based guys spend a lot of time together and they watch a lot of racing together, so when one starts having success, I think that does attract other people too. And it just shows that there’s no north–south divide as far as flat racing is concerned, and no difference in the ability of the trainers and the facilities we have round here,” he says.

“Sheikh Mohammed Obaid contacted me more or less directly through a friend of his that had horses with us at the time, he doesn’t use agents really. I think the agents for most of those owners maybe couldn’t see further than Newmarket a lot of the time, although Mark trained a lot for them. But now they’re with us, they’re with Kevin Ryan, Richard Fahey, the list goes on up here, and now Wathnan have a lot of horses in the north.”

Wathnan Racing, the quick-to-emerge global operation of the Qatari royal family, backed by the Emir himself, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, has already enjoyed impressive immediate returns out of the Burke stable.

“Wathnan’s agent Richard Brown happened to ask me if there was anything in the yard – older horses – that was for sale. That was this time last year.” Burke relates.

“I mentioned Native Warrior could be bought and I recommended him: he won first time out for them then was third at Royal Ascot. Thankfully, Wathnan sent me those breeze-up horses that both won at Royal Ascot.”

Shareholder and Leovanni were the horses. Shareholder, the colt, won the G2 Norfolk Stakes and Leovanni, the filly, carried off the G2 Queen Mary Stakes.

“That’s the bit of luck you need,” he continues. “They bought a lot of breeze ups and we could have been sent a couple of others but thankfully they sent Leovanni and Shareholder to us.”

Both horses went to the Breeders’ Cup at Del Mar in November but neither ran their race; they were found to have “physical issues,” and had time away in Newmarket ahead of their three-year-old campaigns.

“I wouldn’t imagine either would be ready to race until about May/June time,” he says.

Across the stable yard, in an end-of-row box, her head buried in her feed bin, is the grey filly Fallen Angel. She is the latest Spigot Lodge classic winner, following on from the likes of Jack Spigot, the 1821 St Leger winner after whom the stable takes its name, the 1849 Derby winner The Flying Dutchman, and recently, under Burke’s tenure, the brilliant G1 Prix de Diane heroine Laurens who brought six Group 1 trophies back to the yard.

Fallen Angel, still relatively lightly-raced as a four-year-old with eight runs on the board, won the G1 Moyglare Stud Stakes at two and returned to Ireland for her biggest success, the G1 Irish 1,000 Guineas, for owner Steve Parkin’s Clipper Logistics operation. She, too, is now under the Wathnan banner.

“Wathnan were keen to get her, that was a direct deal with the previous owners and thankfully they left her with us as well. She could be a big one for this year,” Burke says.

“She’s going to go to the Lockinge and then she’ll probably run in the Group 2 fillies and mares at Ascot, the Duke Of Cambridge, unless she wins the Lockinge, then she could go to the Queen Anne. That’s the plan in our minds at the moment.

“I think it’s very important for Wathnan: I believe the Emir loves Ascot and he might get over for this year’s Royal Ascot with a bit of luck, so it’s important she goes and runs well in the Lockinge and she’d go there to Ascot with a serious chance in the fillies and mares. It’s the old mile and that trip and that track will suit her brilliantly.”

All of this is a long way from the pubs in Rugby in which he was raised as a landlord’s son, or his time as “a moderate jump jockey for eight or nine years,” or the days of “broken down hurdlers” and low-grade all-weather track runners that were the story of his early years as a trainer.

He started out running a livery stable at Newark, Nottinghamshire along with his wife, Elaine, the daughter of former Wantage-based trainer Alan Jarvis. They started training and moved around different stables at Southwell, Broadway in the Cotswolds, Ginge and Wantage in Oxfordshire, and Newmarket, the couple working hard, initially doing everything around the yard including riding out, which Elaine still does.

“I was never assistant trainer to anybody, I rode out for a lot of different trainers and my father-in-law was a successful trainer, so I watched what he did and glued different things together from a lot of different people. I made a hell of a lot of mistakes along the way and still make mistakes now but hopefully not as many,” he says.

He recalls one that got away and it still rankles: Morgans Harbour needed time, he was a maiden after 17 starts for Burke and was taken away by the owner to join the powerful Mary Reveley stable for whom the horse won 10 of his next 12 races across the following two seasons, culminating with the G1 Sefton Novices’ Hurdle.

“I bought him out of a field in Ireland for ten grand,” he says. “That killed me then at that stage of my career, I’ve never forgotten that.”

Burke’s breakthrough came shortly after, though, with the filly Daring Destiny, owned by his main backer in those early days, Nigel Shields. She won the 1994 Ayr Gold Cup – one of only nine wins for the stable on the flat in Britain that season – as well as the G3 Phoenix Sprint Stakes in Ireland and the G2 Golden Peitsche in Germany the following year.

Burke had 10 wins in 1995, nine in 1996 and then things started to happen: 24 wins, 41, 50, then 52 to start the new century. That year, 2000, brought the move north to Spigot Lodge and it wasn’t altogether smooth with numbers reduced initially. But after dipping to 32 wins in 2002, the stable began to hit its straps: 46 wins, then 64, 62, 82, 62 and 62.

Burke’s career had found strong traction and that was emphasised when he took the colt Lord Shanakill to France in early July 2009 and won his first Group 1, the Prix Jean Prat. But it all shuddered to a jolting stop. Before that month was out the BHA had disqualified him, banished him from Spigot Lodge and his father-in-law Jarvis had had to step in to keep the business afloat, which at that time had 90 horses and employed 35 staff.

“It couldn’t have come at a worse time because we were going along the right path,” Burke says.

His 12-month disqualification was imposed after an inquiry ruled he had breached rules regarding the passing of information five years earlier to warned-off gambler and former racehorse owner Miles Rodgers, then an investor in Spigot Lodge. The disqualification meant Burke would need dispensation from the BHA to live at Spigot Lodge with Elaine and their two daughters, Kelly and Lucy – which the authority did not grant for a time – and would need to apply to the governing body for his licence once the period was over.   

“When the ban finished, they still wouldn’t give me my licence back,” he says. “We even had to fight to get Elaine on the licence and that took about a year. By that time the yard was down to about 15 horses and we owned most of them.

Neighbours John and Kirsty Weymes took in some horses in the interim and Burke’s daughters were involved in the training of those. There were plans to sell up but there was no buyer for Spigot Lodge.

It wasn’t until late summer 2013 that Burke was granted a trainer’s licence again, after a period as Elaine’s assistant. Earlier, that spring and summer, a horse Burke had sourced lifted them back into the spotlight: Libertarian became the first Yorkshire-trained winner of York’s G2 Dante Stakes in 70 years and was then second in the Derby, going close to making Elaine the first licensed woman to train a Derby winner at Epsom. Libertarian was sold to Godolphin for serious money, and soon the Spigot Lodge operation, with its master back at the helm, was making up for lost time.

Burke’s walkie-talkie crackles on his desk. It’s time to climb into his silver pick-up truck and go up to the high moor to watch the last lot.

“I think we had to prove ourselves again, no doubt about that,” he says as the vehicle bumps along slowly on the grass beside the lane, passing the string. “There was a lot of scepticism, I think. I’m sure there were plenty of people around at that time who wouldn’t have supported us bar us snowballing and getting the whole thing back going again. Having said that, a few people were really good and supported us through thick and thin, John Hughes and Ray Bailey for example.

“So, yeah, I don’t know … we just worked away, and having something taken off you makes you appreciate it even more when you do come back, but we managed to get hold of it again.”

He talks about how they purchased horses and kept shares in them, so yielded a return when the good ones were sold on, sometimes to Australia or Hong Kong. And the importance of working hard at the sales, using the skills, insights, and knowledge he learned from his late mentor around the sales grounds, Colette Synnott.

He picked out his 2016 G1 Commonwealth Cup heroine Quiet Reflection, paying only £44,000 for the filly that he “kept a leg in” and which would sell to Coolmore for 2.1 million guineas at the end of her career. Then came Laurens with all she achieved, supported by Havana Grey’s Group 1 win in the 2018 Flying Five, and Burke has not really looked back.

Standing on the cushioned grass of the high moor, the view across the dale makes it seem like you’re on top of the world on this bright, early February morning, and the breath comes out loud and heavy as the horses’ lungs get a good blowout coming up the stiff, searching canter.

“That’s Thunder Run, he goes to the Lincoln, all being well,” he says as one reaches the summit.

Burke asks riders about their horses as they slow to a walk and that continues back in the pick-up, window down, as he drives back along the lane, dry stone walls either side.

“Did he move alright, Mark?” and “Let the others get away, otherwise he starts spinning,” and “Are you happy with him?” and then, “I think Lena is going to ride him home,” as he checks to make sure a girl on her first day riding out is looked out for. There is a good feel about the Spigot Lodge team, a welcome vibe that gives a general sense that it’s a good place to work.

“We’ve got a great team of staff now, the best team of horses and the best team of staff we’ve had as a whole,” Burke says. “We do look after the lads really well. They’re well paid, their hours are good, the working conditions are good and word of mouth gets round.

“With all of us and the part-timers there’d be about 50. We had 32 riding out first lot this morning, that would be including all the jockeys we use, we pay them to ride out.”

His daughter Lucy is among the team’s work riders: she and her sister Kelly each gave birth to their first child last year. Kelly has not returned to riding out yet, she is instead at the heart of the organisation in the office, while Elaine is on grandmother duty looking after Harvey, nine months, and Harper, seven months.

“The grandkids, they’re fantastic, they definitely give you another reason to keep working and work for them,” he says.

“It’s more fun than when the girls were young, because we were so busy when they were little,” he adds and recalls the bungalow when they first moved to the yard at Ginge: it was no more than an office, with no bathroom and no shower for the first few months, so the girls had to get bathed in the sink.  

“They were three or four when we were down there and won the Ayr Gold Cup, so they had to muck in. When we were riding out, they were parked with one of the staff in the office who looked after them until they went to school,” he says. “We can appreciate the kids now.”

On the office wall, among the pictures of Laurens, Fallen Angel, Quiet Reflection, Havana Grey, and a host of other big race wins is an old picture of Kelly after her first win as an amateur rider, at Catterick. Family is clearly important, so with his girls so involved in the business, will they take on the licence at Spigot Lodge one day?

He’s not sure.

“I wouldn’t force them into it,” he says. “It’s a nice thought but it’s great when it’s going well, this job, but it can be heartbreaking and soul destroying at times. I think they’ve got to go into it with their eyes fully open, prepared for the good times and the bad times.

“At the moment we’re having good times and they probably were too young to remember the bad times. I’m not even talking about when we were banned: it was hard work to get going when we started with three broken down horses and an overdraft. We never really should have started training when we did but we managed to just work bloody hard to get through it.”

Leaving Spigot Lodge behind, Hollins is a whole lot easier on the engine. The hard work was done on the way up and now the car cruises downhill towards the bridge across the Ure.

Burke has done the hard yards to reach his career high point and attract the calibre of owners he has now, but there is no indication that he has finished climbing and is ready to cruise, there is still plenty to achieve: his ban and the cancer have taught him you can’t take anything for granted, be that your career or life itself ∎

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