BEN HASLAM will surely be hoping he never has to experience the famous Sir Alex Ferguson ‘hairdryer’ treatment.

The Manchester United manager is just another high-profile recruit to the Middleham trainer’s yard – taking a share in the unraced Diaktoros – and the 28-year-old is keen to impress one of football’s greatest ever managers.

Ferguson, of course, loves his horses, is frequently seen on the track at York, and has enjoyed the fruits of talented performers on both the Flat and over jumps as an owner.

It’s a measure of the progress Haslam is making at the famous Castle Hill Stables, situated in the shadow of Richard III’s childhood home, since taking over the licence from his father, Pat, three years ago.

With some of JP McManus’ multi-millions also invested in the yard – the famous green and gold hooped silks are carried on Jewel In The Sun – these are key times for the young man.

Get it right and the owners could come flooding.

“JP has been very supportive and we have got another horse with him for this season – a summer jumper called Jewel In The Sun and Sir Alex has got a share in a three-year-old that hasn’t run yet,” Haslam said.

“He’s a big, backward type of horse but he is a nice horse and he is going well. He’s going to be a dual purpose type.

“Sir Alex likes his jumping. He has got a share in a horse and, fingers crossed, if this horse works out okay he would be a supporter for a long time in the future.

“It’s important that JP’s horses run well and that Sir Alex’s horse runs well. He’s a nice horse and, if he is good enough, we will win with him and, with a bit of luck, he will be a bit better than that.”

Haslam has 20 horses in the yard this season – all of whom could win, he says – and, as he approaches his fourth season, there is a confident air about the stable.

“Last season was difficult with the weather,” he added. “We had soft and fast ground horses but they were ready at the wrong times of the year. We just got wrong-footed a little bit as did everyone else.

“We had only half the amount of runners we would have had the season before but we still had plenty of winners and the horses ran well. We just couldn’t get the two-year-olds going. That was our main issue.

“But fingers crossed they will be better for that and the three-year-old crop this year should show that.”

Difficulties aside, 2012 still brought 11 winners for the team and, crucially, also showed Haslam how to come to terms with setbacks.

“It helps you to deal with certain things but you have to take the positives out of negatives and the horses didn’t have a hard season last year,” he explained.

“As long as you can turn that into a good season this year it will work. You see it time and time again. If a horse has a very good year one, they tend to find it difficult to repeat that in year two and they can often come back to it in year three.

“Horses have in and out seasons, as do trainers, as do stables.

“Training at this sort of level, unless you have big backing, by a big owner, with lots of really good horses, it’s a bit of a balancing act.

“You have to place your horses very well, to the enth degree, otherwise they are just not competitive and they find themselves in the wrong company.

“The good horses will always take care of themselves. If you have got good horses life is pretty straightforward. It’s knowing how to deal with the bad horses.

“That’s not something I have necessarily learned. My father was always an expert with horses other people couldn’t necessarily win with or with horses that were limited with ability and finding the right race for them.

“That’s the key. I’d rather have lots and lots of good horses but, at the moment, that’s the situation we are in.”

Having come to the crease, so to speak, in a recession, Haslam has had to face hard financial realities from the start.

But while he acknowledges that prize money is poor, the key in his eyes is to keep promoting the sport, while trying to narrow the growing polarisation that keeps the vast majority of the money in the hands of the very few at the top.

“With anything, there is always plenty of money for certain aspects of sport,” he said. “You only have to go to the yearling, foals and mare sales to see there is plenty of money. What happens is the money becomes polarised. The rich and the poor parts and that’s what has happened in racing.

“We are at the polarised end that doesn’t have lots of money. It is more important now than ever to be promoting the sport better – to get the investment.

“We probably never had to rely on promotion whereas now, with horses like Frankel and Sprinter Sacre, we really need to push that and get people to the races.

“The prize money in France, for example, is fantastic but there is never anyone at the races. That’s because there is no passion for it.

“We should never lose sight of the fact that, while we might not have a lot of prize money, we have probably the greatest public interest in racing – certainly in the top three in the world.”