More than 23,000 runners in France More than 5,000 winners in France 31 times champion traîner .
Besides the already staggering figures of his forty-seven-year career , the stable ’ s consistent winning rate commands admiration .
22 %, from a population of nearly 23,000 flat runners in France , is a phenomenal result . And 19 % at the highest level !
By dint of reading about this man and hearing him spoken of by those who have known him or still know him, beyond the repeated tributes to his mentors, to his wife Elisabeth and to his staff, one realises the recurrence of several themes.
The first is that of «happy horses», which appear regularly, in the background, but insistently, as if it were an even more important objective than victory. The second is the almost nostalgic evocation of what we will call a «golden age», that of youth, speed and risk, where everything is possible, except regret.
It is hard to imagine André Fabre being nostalgic. His success is colossal. He oozes confidence. In the world we are interested in, his power and notoriety have long allowed him to dispense with unwelcome intrusions (an absolute luxury), and to summon great minds at will, to choose precisely the path he wishes to take. The trainer is the sorcerer of the racing tribe, the one who knows, argues with the gods, masters the unpredictable, knows and can do everything. And Fabre is THE sorcerer of our little village.
Yet there is abundant testimony from those who knew him then, in the days of André Adèle, the escapades and outings to Saumur, Waregem and Auteuil, the bon vivant who had not yet become a monk, a cyclist and a grumpy horseman.
These former colleagues in the weiging rooms sometimes measured the world that separated their rough apprenticeships from the lecture halls of the rue d’Assas and the riding schools of Berlin, the gentleman-rider perceived as a dilettante from the hard-working jockey. But the esprit de corps prevailed. André Fabre readily welcomes those who have measured themselves against the rail-ditch and fences. He goes out of his way to reach out to them. This is not unlike brothers in arms who, united for the duration of a conflict, meet again years later with emotion, even though their destinies have irrevocably separated them.
The sorcerer first lived his bohemian life, and he does not forget those who shared that time.
• Louis de Bourgoing, whose father was one of André Fabre’s first owners when he started training.
«André Adèle, it was an old story with our family, going back several generations on both sides. When he died, the priority successor was Jack-Hubert Barbe. But André, who had already left, was approached by others and he got them back. There was Doctor David, Mr Thibault, and others including, indeed, my father. He already really liked André and Elizabeth at André Adèle’s. It turned out to be great for us and not bad for André because among the horses we entrusted to him in the first season, there were some very good ones, like Miss Tracy, winner of the Prix Maurice Gillois 80 (and a flat race at Alençon on her second outing in May 79), Quid Novi, who took 2nd place in the Georges Courtois, and Petit Fontaine, who won two Murats. I can still see the 1980 Obstacle Golden Horse that my father received, when we had a maximum of three broodmares. For us, it was a phenomenal chance to have André as a trainer at the time. It was great.»
«I think he’s interested in his owners, in what they do. He’s a man of the world, that’s for sure. With his job, he meets relatively important people in political affairs, etc., and I think he’s very happy to talk to them about all sorts of subjects... He has also kept friends from his younger days, people he has remained very close to and who are not necessarily from the same world.»
• Having come from Belgium, Ronny Dupon was a jockey for André Adèle at the same time as André Fabre.
His father was at that time at the French embassy in England, it was in the 70s. You could tell he was very well brought up. Nevertheless, we used to school horses together in the morning and ride bikes to lose weight. And so, as he lived in Saint-Germain, we went to eat together two or three times in a small restaurant there. But it wasn’t the height of luxury. He wasn’t at all pretentious. I phoned him a few years ago to ask if I could go and watch a training session with him. He said there was no problem and that I could go and see him at 10 am. So I was there at 10 am sharp at his place in Chantilly, but I wouldn’t have wanted to be late. Everything was timed to the minute, because he told me, he was going to eat at 11 am before going to the races! At Mr Adèle’s, it was very different. Summer or winter, we always took the horses out at the same time. Hot or not hot, cold or not cold, the first lot always went out at 8 am. Only, we were 45 on horseback and we weren’t in the Maisons-Laffitte park, but on Avenue de Saint-Germain. So we had to cross the main road from Paris to Poissy to go to work. But we could only cross in groups of fifteen. So, in fact, it wasn’t 8 o’clock for everyone, because the latecomers joined the group while waiting to cross the main road. It was a bit chaotic. In the end, we had a good laugh, but we don’t necessarily have that image of Mr Adèle. He had 200 horses, and he knew them all, of course. He didn’t like us bothering the horses, washing their legs, or brushing them. In the evening, when he did his rounds, if he saw you brushing your horse too much, he’d say, ‘Oh, my lad, leave him some hair! A rabbit runs fast and you’ve never brushed it!’ He hardly ever gave orders. I just remember one exception. With a horse I was riding for Mr Jeffroy and which had stopped dead at the river by the stands. He said to me, ‘Ronny, when you get to the river, you hide behind another horse so the horse cannot quite see the river jump.’ And we got over, to finish second. I found myself on it again afterwards and this time the trick didn’t work. We got over, but I had all four legs in the water. I’ve even got the photo here at home!’»
• Claude Beniada, former trainer and journalist, representative of the late Khalid Abdullah and Juddmonte Farms in France
«I have a lot of respect and admiration for André Fabre, whom I have known for forty years. Everything he has achieved in his training career in France and abroad is unparalleled here and there is no doubt that his record will remain unmatched for a long time to come.
In June 1988, I was at the races in Chantilly and on the programme was a maiden for 2-year-old unraced horses over 1,200 metres in a straight line. André Fabre presented one of his horses ridden by Cash Asmussen. At the time, there weren’t televisions everywhere on the racecourse and the best way to see the final stages of these races was to stand 100m before the post, behind the rail opposite the stands. From this position you have a perfect view of the last 600 metres of the race after the climb and the final sprint.
So I was stationed at this spot, alongside André Fabre. His horse won brilliantly with disconcerting ease. I congratulated him and he made this comment as he put away his binoculars: «That’s very good. He’s undoubtedly going to make a very good horse over 2,400 metres.»
It was June of his two-year-old’s year and André Fabre was already looking much further ahead.
I have never forgotten these words, especially since this horse was called In The Wings, that he belonged to the first crop of Sadler’s Wells, which we did not yet know what an extraordinary stallion he was going to become, and that In The Wings became one of the best 2,400-metre horses in the world.
Since then, I have always listened with the greatest attention to André Fabre’s every comment on one of his horses and having had the privilege of working with him for many years for Juddmonte, I can testify to the extraordinary quality of his judgement on the horses he trains. This is, without a doubt, one of the many reasons for his extraordinary success.»
Jean Biju rode in races with André Fabre, then he became a journalist at Paris-Turf and met up with his former fellow trainer, but not for very long...
«I knew him well because one day we rode together at Nantes, I had a bad fall and he offered to take me back to Maisons-Laffitte with Elisabeth. A few years later, I had become a journalist and André Fabre’s horses were winning a lot of races at Auteuil. One day, a 3-year-old named Vernusson, who belonged to a former jockey from the west, Jean-Marie Vaillant, joined the Fabre stable to make his debut at Auteuil in the Talhouët-Roy, in November 1983 (the colt had already run eight times on the flat and eight times over hurdles, editor’s note). And he won by eight lengths, ahead of another horse trained by André Fabre. Trainer Pierre Pelat was furious and challenged me to write what he said, namely that Fabre’s horses were «aeroplanes». A few days later, I was with the editor-in-chief of the Turf, Jacques Orliaguet at Auteuil, and we bumped into André Fabre, who greeted Mr Orliaguet and told him that there was no point in sending anyone else to him after what had been written about his horses! That’s how it started...»