A humble Peter Snowden has acknowledged his 1000th winner for Darley as a “wonderful milestone”.
But he has also been quick to praise the team around him for helping make the success possible.
Three-year-old filly Sail got Snowden to the significant mark with her maiden success at Gosford on Thursday, the trainer’s second winner for the day.
He had been sitting on 998 wins since Guelph’s victory in the Blue Diamond Prelude for fillies at Caulfield on Saturday.
Snowden’s impressive haul for Sheikh Mohammed’s Darley operation has come in less than five years.
“It’s a wonderful milestone and I’m very proud of it,” Snowden told AAP.
“It’s an old cliche, I know, but you are only as good as the people around you and that’s certainly the case here. I’ve got a lot of people to thank.”
Snowden was a long-time foreman to John Hawkes at Crown Lodge before Hawkes stepped down as trainer for the Ingham family’s Woodlands operation in 2007.
Bob Ingham appointed Snowden as the new head trainer, a role he assumed at the end of that year.
But in March 2008, Ingham shocked the racing industry when he sold his family’s racing and breeding empire to Sheikh Mohammed.
Snowden was retained by Darley and among the 1000 wins he has amassed since have been 20 Group One victories.
He also claimed a Sydney trainers’ premiership in 2009/10.
Among the people Snowden thanked was his son Paul, who is stable foreman in Melbourne.
“A lot of the winners have come from Melbourne,” Snowden said.
“But there’s just great people everywhere that make my job easy.”
Snowden admitted getting to 1000 wins had come around quickly.
“I remember being told a couple of months ago that I was on about 940 and thought then that it had come around pretty quickly,” he said.
“I’m just very lucky to be in this position to train these horses.”
Snowden oversees three training operations for Sheikh Mohammed – one at Warwick Farm, a private training facility at Osborne Park in NSW and the stables at Flemington in Melbourne.
“It is Peter’s work ethic and the support that he receives from his team that delivers the success for Sheikh Mohammed,” Darley’s managing director Henry Plumptre said.
“I have often said that we inherited some significant assets with the buyout of the Woodlands racing and breeding operations but none were more important than Peter and the intellectual property he brought to the table.
“On behalf of Sheikh Mohammed, we thank him for his massive contribution and dedication, and that of his whole team.”
