Racing: Jarvis quietly plans an Epsom shock with Coshocton

The Derby: The master of Kremlin House stables will saddle a 25-1 shot in Saturday's big race but insists the colt is not a no-hoper

As soon as you arrive at Kremlin House, on Newmarket's Fordham Road, you realise the stories are true. Michael Jarvis emerges from a box brushing the detritus of stable management from an old jumper. In his hands is a horse blanket, out his mouth comes a good morning. He does not mention that his visitor is 30 minutes late.

Thus the character of Michael John Jarvis is immediately confirmed. It may say as much about his training contemporaries as himself, but no piece is ever written about the man without reference to his courtesy and modest manner. This, in modern speak, is the professionals' professional.

Unlike others who do his job in Newmarket, Jarvis recognises it is only a job and not an exercise in saving the world. Unlike others, success has not made him a clever dick. Unlike others, victory for his Coshocton in Saturday's Derby would be met with unanimous pleasure in the sport.

It does not even occur to Jarvis that training is something to get pompous about. "Are some people who do my job rude and arrogant?" he wonders. Clearly, he does not mix very much with his confrères.

Jarvis is a man of humble origins and now, several European Classics, a 1,000 Guineas and Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe later, he is still humble. "I had a pretty ordinary education and no academic qualifications," he says. "I wouldn't have made a very good scientist or brain surgeon."

It is Jarvis's greatest wish to win an Epsom Derby, yet, in a sense, he already has. While his country was in the process of winning a World Cup, the stable lad Jarvis was leading a bonny colt called Charlottown around the parade ring on Epsom Downs one Wednesday in June. The horse lost a shoe in the preliminaries, but that was just a prelude to a Cinderella story. Charlottown, ably assisted by Scobie Breasley, scooted home.

"It used to be more of a holiday crowd in those days with the cockneys, the pearly kings and queens and gypsies," Jarvis remembers. "But if you train Flat horses in this country this is still the race you want to win above all others."

A year after Charlottown, Jarvis embarked on a new career, as private trainer to the Radio Rentals man, David Robinson. It was a posting gilded with opportunity, offering immediate access to decent horses. Jarvis did not waste it.

Robinson may have gone, but Jarvis, who will be 64 in August, keeps rolling on. You never hear much from him, but his horses regularly shout the message. "I've been fortunate that we've always been able to come up with a decent horse, which keeps you both in some sort of limelight," he says. "And big races count. You could win a thousand sellers and nobody would remember you.

"This is a game of fashion. If you have a few bad years certain elements of the public think you're either drinking too much, you've lost your touch, you're womanising, or all three.

"But even in the bad times I've always enjoyed training. It's never been a hardship to get up in the morning and go to work. You live a dream the whole time in racing. You're always looking for the next big horse."

The hope now is that the big boots will be filled by a chestnut colt by the name of Coshocton, the winner of Goodwood's Predominate Stakes. He is the first horse Jarvis has trained for the American John Phillips, whose grandfather John Galbreath owned the 1972 Derby winner Roberto, thus becoming the first person to win both the Kentucky and Epsom Derbys. Phillips runs the Darby Dan Farm in Ohio, and nearby lies the town of Coshocton.

"I don't have that many runners in Classics because I really do dislike running no-hopers," Jarvis says. "I like to think it has a semblance of a chance. I'm not saying we haven't had our social runners, but it's been against my wishes. This is not a social runner and we are very hopeful, though I'd have to say his price [around 25-1] is fairly realistic."

Jarvis tells you all this in the sitting room over coffee and chocolate digestives. It is much too cosy a place to carry the austere title of Kremlin House, the name dreamt up by a Prince Soltykoff, a Russian Cambridge scholar with an interest in the turf around the 1880s. Pooh Cottage would be more appropriate.

It is all rather relaxing, which might be an explanation for Jarvis's success. "The one thing about training racehorses is that you mustn't get too upset about disasters because another one is just around the corner," he says. "If things are upsetting me I try not to fly off the handle and give it a day to analyse things. Otherwise I'd make myself miserable. I walk away from confrontation. I am what I am, and if I tried to change my personality it wouldn't work. I'm quiet and reserved." Just as, you hope, might be the case for the winners' enclosure at Epsom.

Late burst by Kyllachy books his Royal ticket

Kyllachy will compete in the King's Stand Stakes over five furlongs at Royal Ascot after producing blistering pace to win the Temple Stakes at Sandown yesterday.

Henry Candy's four-year-old was gaining his third successive victory of the season when quickening into the lead with Jamie Spencer at the furlong marker to beat Vision Of Night by four lengths.

Song, Kyllachy's maternal grandsire, was trained by Candy's father, Derrick, to take both the Temple and King's Stand prizes 33 years ago and, said Henry, Kyllachy is the fastest horse he has dealt with since.

"Song was a million years ago, and it makes me sound like a pensioner, but he was exactly the same as this horse in that he had to covered up and then produce that tremendous burst of speed," the trainer said.

Candy regards Kyllachy as a five-furlong specialist and has not entered him in the six-furlong July Cup."I'd an in-depth discussion with the jockey the day the July Cup closed. He uttered the immortal phrase, 'Jesus, he's got too much pace'. To say the horse is too quick to win the July Cup I thought was lovely."