Desert Crown raced his way to success at the Epsom Derby held in Surrey, United Kingdom, on Saturday. The three-year-old bay horse, ridden by jockey Richard Kingscote, gave trainer Sir Michael Stoute his sixth win in the equestrian event. 

76-year-old Sir Michael Ronald Stoute is a Barbadian-British horse trainer with expertise in flat racing. 

Born on October 22, 1945, Stoute spent his childhood in Barbados and lived with his father, who was the Chief of Police for the Caribbean nation. At the age of 19, he left the island to work as an assistant for Pat Rohan, a horse trainer. 

By 1972, Stoute decided to train horses by himself. This eventually led him to his big break, when on April 28, Sandal, a horse owned by his father, won at England’s Newmarket Racecourse.

As the years went by, Stoute won several horsing competitions all across the world, such as the Hong Kong Vase, the Japan Cup, the Dubai World Cup, and the Breeders Cup.

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In 1998, he received the chivalric rank of Knight Bachelor for his contribution in the tourism industry in his homeland, Barbados. 

Stoute made history by becoming the only horse trainer in the 20th century to have five successive victories in the English Classic horse racing seasons. He also became the Champion Trainer several times between 1981 and 2009.

Stoute has trained multiple popular horses in his equine career, including Shergar, the 1981 Epsom Derby winner who later ended up getting stolen for a ransom of £2 million, reportedly by the Irish Republican Army (IRA).

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In 2013, Stoute trained Queen Elizabeth II’s beloved horse Estimate, who won the Gold Cup at Royal Ascot.

Currently, the 76-year-old trains horses at two yards located in Newmarket’s Bury Road- the Beech Hurst Stables and the Freemason Lodge Stables.