Archie Maximilian Bannatyne Watson served a worldwide apprentice, culminating in a four-year spell as assistant trainer to William Haggas, at Somerville Lodge in Newmarket, before completing the purchase of Saxon Gate in Upper Lambourn – historically the home of the legendary Fulke Walwyn – in July, 2016. He embarked on a training career in his own right with just three horses, bought in the hope of success, but later reflected that anything else ‘would have been a sideways or even a backward step’.
Watson saddled his first winner, the not-entirely-inaptly-named Ride The Lightning, ridden by Jim Crowley, at Kempton Park on October 18, 2016 and, although his inaugural season yielded just four winners, he wasted little time in becoming the fastest rising star in the training ranks of British Flat Racing. In his first full season, 2017, he saddled 56 winners and, in 2018, increased his seasonal tally to 105 winners and amassed over £1 million in prize money for the first time. Watson enjoyed his most successful season, numerically, in 2019 – the year in which Hollie Doyle succeeded Edward Greatrex as stable jockey at Saxon Gate – with 133 winners. At the last count, he had saddled 586 winners on the Flat on British soil.
As far as winners at the highest level are concerned, Watson has trained two, or three, depending upon semantics. The first of them was the now-retired Glen Shiel who, on October 17, 2020, as a six-year-old, made much of the running and rallied inside the final furlong to win the British Champions Sprint at Ascot by a nose under Hollie Doyle. The ‘Pocket Rocket’ was also aboard the seven-year-old Outbox who, on February 19, 2022, won the HH The Amir Trophy in Doha, Qatar; to avoid any confusion, that contest is a ‘local’ Group 1 race, but only afford Listed status internationally. Nevertheless, Watson, Doyle and the three-year-old Bradsell also won the King’s Stand Stakes at Royal Ascot on June 20, 2023.