REG BOND knew he had two choices. When doctors told him he had a brain tumour, he realised he could let the illness control and consume him. Or he could fight back. He chose the latter.

You have been living on another planet if you like racing and haven’t heard of Bond, the 68-year-old tyre magnate. He is the man who built an army of racehorses to attack the top racing prizes.

Like Bond Boy, his first ever horse, who won the Stewards’ Cup at Goodwood. Like Monsieur Bond, the dual Group winning sprinter who beat off the very best to win the Duke of York Stakes on Knavesmire.

Away from the track, Bond patiently turned Bond International, on Pocklington Industrial Estate, into a massive concern with four offices around the country.

But a year ago everything changed.

“I was rushed into York Hospital on the Monday,” he said. “On the Friday, they took me into a consulting room and said ‘Reg, we’re very sorry, we’ve found a brain tumour’.

“That changed my lifestyle. That changed everything. I thought ‘Where do I go from here?’ I’ve got four kids that work for me, I love them, I’ve also got another 200-odd staff that are like my children.

“I thought ‘What the hell do I do?’ I’ve got all my horses, all my staff, all my business. Two weeks later, they took me into Hull and they did an operation.

“I don’t have to go back to the hospital for scans until November. They said ‘We have shrunk it. We can’t get rid of it totally but at least it is half the size of what it was’.

“Whatever they did on the radiotherapy, it was a lot better. There are four types of tumours. One and two they can get rid of. Three and four, you are left with them for life and I’ve got the third.

“Four, you are dead within a year. The side it is on, they tell me it is the quiet side of the brain. But when they opened me up, they took bits of the cancer away – they might have touched a nerve and I might not have been able to speak or walk.”

For many, hearing they have cancer brings things into sharp focus.

So it has proved with Bond.

“I want to win a Group 1 race,” he added.

“I don’t know what life I have got left but I want to win a Group 1. One of the horses is there to do it and there’s a couple of two-year-olds – one called Bop It, who is out of Misu Bond.

“I really go to bed and I wake up the next day and think ‘I’ve woken up’. I’m there, I have got a brain tumour.”

Bond’s love affair with racing began in boyhood, cheering on a horse called Bob’s Best and well-known jockeys round Beverley. Bond knew the riders with which to side.

In those days, a savvy pilot could squirt clear, steal a decisive few lengths and romp in almost untouched. Bond backed the likes of Brian Henry and Snowy Grey.

“I go back to my boyhood and the first thing about horses was that my wife and I first met when we were 16 and we went racing,” he explained. “We could only afford to go into the cheap sides of the ring.

“I was an apprentice engineer at that time and I think my wage was about £11 odd a week so there wasn’t a lot of money left. We stood one day and I just thought ‘I would love to own a racehorse’ – that was a big dream.

“We went into business and I said to my wife ‘we’re going to have a racehorse but only when we can afford it’.

“I think I started my own business at 21 or 22 and I was 55 when I bought my first horse. I waited all those years. But I wanted to be into it in a way where we could afford it.

“Bond Boy was the first I bought and he won the Stewards’ Cup for us in 2002.”

The Stewards’ Cup, the cavalry charge that crowns the climax of Glorious Goodwood, is a race for the real purists.

Boasting more than two dozen runners, it is as known for the lottery of the draw as it is for the quality of winner.

Bond Boy also needed late rain, enough to leave Bond soaked to the skin, just to take part.

“A friend of mine, also into racing in the West Country, has a business called Bathwick Tyres,” said Bond of how he came to own his first star. “He said ‘I’m running a horse at York, come along and I’ll introduce you to my trainer Bryan Smart’.

“That’s what we did and, outside the champagne ring, we had a little meeting and I said ‘I’m ready, can you find me a horse?’ We went to the sales and we saw Bond Boy and bought it.

“He was five when he won it. It was unbelievable and, on that particular day, I think Bryan Smart was up at Doncaster. We were down at Goodwood and I can remember getting into the car park and everyone was asking if they needed to take their macs and umbrellas.

“I said ‘No, we need some rain for the horse. If it rains we do not come back and get the umbrellas. I want us to be wet through – so we are dripping wet because we need the rain’.

“Half an hour before the race, the clouds opened up and it rained.”

Bond had 18 horses in training then with Smart, who subsequently moved his entire operation up from Lambourn to Hambleton so the owner could take a closer look at his string.

Bond would later also employ Malton’s Geoff Oldroyd as a personal trainer. The two had a special connection.

“Believe it or not, he worked for me for two years taking tyres out as a wagon driver,” he said. “He was so fed up with racing. He came to me one day and asked if I had a job for him. I said ‘Okay, Manchester, start at 5am every morning’. He was in at 4.55am every morning.

“Neville Bycroft then asked him to come and train some horses and he did that. He rang me up about a year later and said he was going to have a go on his own.

“It was costing me a lot at Bryan’s and I said I would employ him as the trainer. We never really left Bryan. The important thing (with him) was that he put us on the map.”

Their association was crowned a couple of weeks ago when Bond won his own sponsored race, the Group 3 tyregiant.com Summer Stakes at York Racecourse, with Ladies Are Forever.

It was particularly special for him because he bred her. The three-year-old is by Monsieur Bond out of Forever Bond.

The Bond Throughbred Corporation has two stallions, Monsieur Bond and Misu Bond, and 12 mares. Creating his own pedigree is now proving to be Bond’s greatest pleasure.

“Standing at Norton Grove is Monsieur Bond and at Hedgeholme Stud is Misu Bond,” Bond said. “They came from racing and, when you buy them, you have to think ‘what will they do?’ Will they win a Listed race? Will they win a Group race? Will they win a Classic race?

“We have 12 mares as well. I have to buy a mare that I know is quick. When we looked at Ladies Are Forever, she is a daughter of Bond Forever and by Monsieur Bond.

“Breeding gives me the most pleasure. She (Ladies Are Forever) won her maiden at Beverley and went to Royal Ascot thinking she would do really well and she was beaten two necks.

“She got a bit unbalanced in the Nell Gwyn Stakes. She might run once or twice more this year and she has gone up eight pounds for winning at York and she isn’t developed yet.

“She’s in Group company and she will join the mares, eventually. I will find the best stallion I can find.

“I like sprinters. I didn’t want to run a mile or a mile and a half because I was competing with the boys in blue at Godolphin. Sprinting was a niche market – let’s go five, six or, if we are pushing a horse, seven furlongs.

“I get bored with a mile and a mile and a half. It’s too much having to wait for the last three or four furlongs. When we buy pedigrees, we buy for sprinting.”

But that one burning ambition remains. Bond won’t rest until a Group 1 is in his grasp.

“My stallion has won a Group 1 with Gilt Edge Girl (but I haven’t),” he said. “I love the Monsieur Bond fillies. I think I will go abroad to France to do it – something like the Prix de l’Abbaye at Longchamp.

“If I think ‘I’ve got ten years left in life’ – hopefully, one day, I will win one. That would be absolutely marvellous.”