Sir Michael Stoute, one of the finest and most successful trainers British Flat racing has seen, said on Tuesday that he will retire at the end of the season This will bring an end a 52-year career that includes six Derby winners among 16 Classic victories in Britain, 10 UK trainers’ championships and 82 winners at Royal Ascot.

Always a man of few words for the media, Stoute announced his decision in a statement. “I have decided to retire from training at the end of this season,” the 78-year-old said. “I would like to thank all my owners and staff for the support they have given me over the years. It has been a great and enjoyable journey.”

Stoute grew up in Barbados and moved to work in a stable in North Yorkshire as a 19-year-old. He auditioned for the job of BBC racing correspondent soon afterwards but lost out to Julian Wilson and within a few years launched his training career from a small yard in Newmarket in 1972.

Stoute’s early successes came in high-profile handicaps including the Stewards’ Cup and Ayr Gold Cup in 1973. The latter victory, with Blue Cashmere, landed a significant ante-post gamble and, Stoute said, “paid some bills” for his trainer, too. Shergar’s record-breaking 10-length victory in the Derby in 1981 was a career-defining moment for Stoute and helped to secure the first of his 10 trainers’ titles.

Throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s, his Freemason Lodge stable would generally spend the summer engaged in fierce tussle for the championship with that of his friend and near-neighbour, the late Sir Henry Cecil. The big names to pass through his hands included Shahrastani, who beat Dancing Brave to win the 1987 Derby, and winners of the Oaks, 2,000 Guineas, 1,000 Guineas, St Leger and the King George at Ascot.

Stoute was among the first British trainers to appreciate the prize money on offer in the US and Asia, winning the Japan Cup in consecutive years with Singspiel (1996) and Pilsudski (1997), as well as eight races at the Breeders’ Cup meeting in the US between 1996 and 2018.

The success of Workforce, that season’s Derby winner, in the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe in 2010 filled one of the few significant gaps that remained on Stoute’s CV, while the 41-year gap between Shergar’s Derby victory and the trainer’s sixth win, with Desert Crown in 2022, was a record, eclipsing the 35 years between Mathew Dawson’s first and last Derby winners in the late 1800s.

While he enjoyed huge success with the Classic generation, Stoute has also been perhaps the finest trainer of a late-developing horse in living memory. If he decided it was worth persevering with a four-year-old that had not quite lived up to a blue-blooded pedigree in its early seasons, his judgment was usually vindicated. Opera House, Pilsudski, Singspiel and Ulysses were among the Group One winners to benefit from this patient approach.

Stoute also trained the late Queen’s mare Estimate to win the Gold Cup at Ascot, which was perhaps the most cherished success of her seven decades as an owner.

“Michael was always spot-on knowing when to press the ‘go’ button and his patience paid off in spades,” John Warren, the late Queen’s former racing manager, said on Tuesday.

Kieren Fallon, who rode Kris Kin (2003) and North Light (2004) to Derby success for the trainer during a highly successful spell as his stable jockey, said that Stoute “always got the best out of a horse and was able to take a horse from a two-year-old until they retired and keep finding improvement”, and added: “He was a genius around his horses and a gentleman to ride for.”