Trifle and village fete for the man who bred the Derby winner

Gary Robinson, the 65-year-old former engineer who bred Cazoo Derby winner Desert Crown, enjoyed a quiet victory toast with friends at his local pub outside Nemarket on Saturday evening - before looking forward to a celebratory trifle and helping to organise the forthcoming village fete.

The colt he bred burst on to the global racing scene like a comet when maintaining his unbeaten record with a commanding two-and-a-half-length victory, leading home a 1-2-3 for British-breds, in the £1.6million Group One Cazoo Derby (In Memory Of Lester Piggott).

Now a winner of all three lifetime starts, Desert Crown is a son of the Newsells Park Stud stallion, Nathaniel. He was purchased for 280,000 guineas at the Tattersalls October Yearling Sale Book 2 by Blandford Bloodstock on behalf of owner Saeed Suhail.

Desert Crown's dam, DE, is from the family of the Group One winners Byword and Proviso. She has a full-brother foal at foot and has recently tested in foal to Nathaniel for a third time.

All four of Desert Crown’s older siblings are also winners, including Flying Thunder, a Group Three scorer in Hong Kong.

His Derby victory was a fairytale success for his 65-year-old breeder Robinson, who has only been involved in breeding thoroughbreds for the last 15 years of so. He is the owner of both the Strawberry Fields Stud at Fulbourn, near Cambridge, and Brickfield Stud, some ten miles away in Exning, near Newmarket.

Robinson, who lives in Exning but was brought up in Whittlesey, near Cambridge, is an engineer by trade who started out as an apprentice with Hotpoint and has worked his way up the profession to become owner and managing director of Robinson Worldwide Services, manufacturers of specialist breeze block building bricks that are both ballistic and bomb proof.

Speaking from the White Swan Pub in Exning, where celebrations were about to start, Robinson said: “I have studied thoroughbred bloodlines all my life and have now got so many books on the subject, about 700 in all, that I’ve had to move them out of the house.

“I raced Desert Berry in partnership with a great friend of mine, Basil White, who has now sadly passed away, and she won a maiden at Lingfield when she was trained by Chris Wall. But she was very lucky to have managed that success as, just a couple of months before, she got loose and galloped through the centre of Newmarket. By the time that she was caught she was covered in cuts and bruises having crashed through the front window of a Turkish restaurant.

“I have some 14 mares at the moment, and my youngstock include both a yearling half-brother to Desert Crown by Al Kazeem and the first progeny of one of Desert Berry’s earlier foals, Rose Berry, who is a yearling colt by Expert Eye. They will both be going to the sales in the autumn.

“Once I have had a drink here with my friends, I will be going home to have a celebratory trifle with my daughter and then it’s another big day tomorrow as I am helping organise Exning’s Village Fete, which is part of The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations.”

Robinson joked: “I’m not sure where I will go with my breeding now, I might pack it in, I don’t think there are any races bigger than the Derby left to win!”