Most British racecourses now hold considerably more race-days than used to be the case. Salisbury, the second-oldest course in the country after Chester, is no exception. The curiosity of its calendar is that its year nowadays starts later than formerly, with its curtain-raiser now established as taking place on the Sunday afternoon on which the 1,000 Guineas is run at Newmarket. This means that there can no longer be Guineas contenders limbering up at Salisbury before heading to Newmarket, unlike in 1979 when Salisbury held one of its best-remembered race-days on the first Saturday in April.On that desperately wet afternoon, thousands of drenched racegoers plus the nationwide audience of ITV viewers saw the 18-year-old 'Kentucky Kid' Steve Cauthen have both his first British ride and his first British winner when the Barry Hills-trained Marquee Universal won the opening race. Later in the afternoon Cauthen rode Tap On Wood, whose seven wins from 13 starts as a two-year-old had included the National Stakes at the Curragh, into fourth place behind Ryan Price's Coventry Stakes winner Lake City in the 2,000 Guineas Trial. A month later Tap On Wood and Cauthen inflicted a rare defeat on Kris in the 2,000 Guineas.It is likely that if you ask racegoers of a certain vintage to name two horses who have run at Salisbury, Marquee Universal and Tap On Wood may well be the names given. However, one could just as easily hear Mill Reef and Brigadier Gerard, who both won there as two-year-olds in 1970.It is one of racing's glorious coincidences that those two fabulous horses, each of whom might ordinarily have been described as a 'once-in-a-generation' talent, were born in the same year. It is probably less coincidental that they both ran at Salisbury because their trainers Ian Balding and Dick Hern, in common with so many others in the Wiltshire/Berkshire/Oxfordshire/Hampshire area, liked to send their two-year-olds to the testing downland venue. When Mill Reef began to show brilliant speed on the gallops at Kingsclere in the spring of 1970, it was only natural that Balding might choose the Salisbury Stakes in the middle of May for his debut.Balding had done this previously with another of Paul Mellon's American home-breds in the Salisbury Stakes in 1964, the young trainer's first full season with a licence. The colt in question was Silly Season, who went on to end the campaign as the winner of both the Coventry Stakes and Dewhurst Stakes. He was beaten on his first run, though, as another American-owned debutant, Charles Engelhard's Double Jump, justified odds-on favouritism when slamming him by a long-looking three lengths. The form worked out very well as Double Jump ended the year atop the Free Handicap after Jeremy Tree had won five races with him including the National Stakes at Sandown, the Prix Robert Papin at Maisons-Laffitte and the Gimcrack Stakes at York.It turned out that the 1970 Salisbury Stakes was again an Engelhard v. Mellon head-to-head. Again Engelhard had the odds-on favourite (the Fulke Johnson Houghton-trained Fireside Chat, who had won impressively at Newmarket two weeks previously) but Mill Reef was just too good, getting his legendary career off to the best possible start with a four-length victory.Seven weeks later Brigadier Gerard gave Salisbury's regular racegoers further reason to remember the summer of 1970 with pleasure. Having made a winning debut in the Berkshire Stakes at Newbury in June, he landed Salisbury's Champagne Stakes in the first week of July. Two more easy wins (in the Washington Singer Stakes at Newbury and the Middle Park Stakes at Newmarket) completed his unbeaten juvenile campaign before he and Mill Reef made their only meeting the following spring when filling the quinella in a vintage 2,000 Guineas.Mill Reef was not the first Derby winner to make a winning debut in the Salisbury Stakes. Trained at Beckhampton by Fred Darling, Cameronian landed the Salisbury Stakes in May 1930 on what turned out to be his only appearance as a two-year-old. He subsequently repaid Darling's patience handsomely by winning the 2,000 Guineas, Derby and St. James's Palace Stakes at three and the Champion Stakes at four.The career of Cameronian typified the methodology of Fred Darling, who had plotted a similar career-path for Lord Woolavington's Coronach five years previously. The son of Hurry On landed a maiden race on debut at Salisbury in July 1925 and went on to win nine of his remaining 13 races including the Champagne Stakes at Doncaster at two; the Derby, St. James's Palace Stakes, Eclipse Stakes and St. Leger at three; and the Coronation Cup and Hardwicke Stakes at four.Salisbury became particularly important for Fred Darling during the war, during which the course staged much of the racing in the south-west. King George VI's wartime Classic stars Sun Chariot (winner of the Fillies' Triple Crown in 1942) and Big Game both learned their trade there during their first season, with the latter a particularly frequent visitor, winning in April, May and June of his first season, 1941. He also made a winning resumption at Salisbury in the spring of 1942, breaking the seven-furlong course record before heading to Newmarket to win the 2,000 Guineas second time out.The war was over by the time that Fred Darling began running the brilliant Tudor Minstrel in 1946. One of the greatest milers in history, the wide-margin 1947 2,000 Guineas hero stayed local to Beckhampton for his early races in the spring of 1946, winning a maiden race at Bath and the Foal Stakes at Salisbury before heading to Ascot, where he announced his class to a wider audience by taking the Coventry Stakes by four lengths.Another outstanding miler to hone his skills at Salisbury was Warning. Best remembered for his wide-margin Group 1 wins at three and four, Warning had previously been a high-class two-year-old, unbeaten in four starts in 1987. His first two triumphs both came at Salisbury, in a maiden race in June by five lengths (beating Indian Ridge, subsequently successful at Royal Ascot in both the Jersey Stakes and the King's Stand Stakes) and the EBF Myrobella Graduation Stakes Stakes in July (by 10 lengths).Two years later, Jeff Smith's Dashing Blade followed in Mill Reef's footsteps by becoming an Ian Balding-trained Dewhurst winner who had scored at Salisbury en route to Group 1 glory.Since then, several subsequent Classic winners have won juvenile races at Salisbury. Balanchine, trained at Manton by Peter Chapple-Hyam, won the Quidhampton Maiden Fillies' Stakes on debut in September 1993 before taking the Oaks and Irish Derby for Godolphin the following year. Another Godolphin Classic star, the 1999 2,000 Guineas hero Island Sands, had run and won twice at Salisbury at two when trained at Whitsbury by David Elsworth. In a two-race juvenile campaign, he won a Tattersalls-sponsored maiden auction race on debut in August and then took the Cranbourne Conditions Stakes in September.Even better was Sir Percy. Bought by Marcus Tregoning for 16,000gns at Tattersalls' October Sale in 2004, Sir Percy made a winning debut at Goodwood the following May before scoring at Salisbury four weeks later, taking the auction race into which the Champagne Stakes had evolved. Group-race triumphs at Glorious Goodwood and Newmarket (in the Dewhurst) followed, preceding his magnificent campaign as a spring three-year-old which featured second place behind George Washington in the 2,000 Guineas before his thrilling victory in the Derby.Two years after Sir Percy's victory at Salisbury, subsequent Oaks heroine Look Here made a winning debut there in October 2007, beating the following year's Derby fourth Doctor Fremantle. Another subsequent Classic star to score at Salisbury was the 2016 2,000 Guineas winner Galileo Gold, successful in a division of the Bathwick Tyres Maiden Auction Stakes in June 2015. Look Here's trainer Ralph Beckett, a big supporter of the course, won with an even higher-achiever when Juddmonte's home-bred juvenile Bluestocking made a winning debut in a division of the Byerley Stud British EBF Novice Stakes in September 2022. Two years later the daughter of Camelot won the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe.For subsequent international achievement, the Herbert And Gwen Blagrave Maiden Stakes, run at Salisbury on 27 June 2002, takes some beating. Jeff Smith's Norse Dancer, trained at Whitsbury by David Elsworth, beat another debutant, the Ian Balding-trained Phoenix Reach, by a head. The winner went on to finish in the frame in 10 Group 1 races including the 2,000 Guineas and Derby (as well as landing Salisbury's G3 Salisbury Stakes as a four-year-old in August 2004); while Phoenix Reach scored in G1 company in Canada, Hong Kong and Dubai as well as finishing third in the St Leger.A new season of racing at Salisbury lies ahead. How many future stars will further their education there this term?The post Historic Salisbury a Nursery of Champions appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.