DEDICATED form book assessors as well as misty eyed sentimentalists will be urging Turbo to go into over-drive in the last major race of the flat racing season this afternoon.

Not only is he favourite for the highly-competitive November Handicap which he comprehensively won last year, but represents Toby Balding as his last runner in almost 50 years in training.

Ironically Balding, 68, who will be officially handing over the Kimpton Down Stables mantle to his son-in-law and assistant Jonathan Geake this weekend, will not be at the track.

Instead, he will be saddling runners at the less publicised meeting at Sandown.

"Turbo is very well and likes Doncaster,'' Balding reported. "But if it's sticky ground, he won't win. He needs it really wet. He ran well at Newbury a fortnight ago and is an autumn horse.''

Since taking out a licence, the veteran has trained more than 2,000 winners under both codes. Principally regarded as a National Hunt trainer - he is the fifth leading jumps trainer of all time - his first success came in 1957 in the six-furlong Buckingham Palace Stakes for two-year-olds at Ascot with Bower Chalke ridden by the late Willie Snaith after just one month of taking out a licence following the death of his father.

"I also ran Clear River, who finished third under Bill Elliott. She was a decent sprinting mare who later knocked my front teeth out. I think I was lunging her and lost concentration. She swung her head and caught me.''

Few of his profession can advance a CV which includes the winners of two Champion Hurdles, two Grand Nationals, a Cheltenham Gold Cup as well as a host of major races under both rules. His elder brother, Ian, who retired two years ago, partnered almost 100 of them. 'Tobes' rode in a number of National Hunt races, without success, though he did once don the Queen Mother's colours in a point-to-point. "But I didn't come anywhere.''

Initially based at Weyhill - "I was then charging a fiver a week, now it's £33 a day" - he is chiefly associated with his exploits at Fyfield where he trained amongst others, Little Polveir, Kildimo, Decent Fellow and Beech Road. But there is no dispute about the guvnor, Morley Street, a brilliant winner of the 1991 Champion Hurdle, who was twice America's Horse of the Year after facile victories in the Breeders Cup Chases. He was also a decent flat performer, just touched off the Doncaster Cup and fourth in the Pitmans Derby.

"He was a lovely horse,'' Balding reflected of his character. "He was a total giver, though he bled almost from day one and you had to be very careful how to train him.''

Cool Ground in 1992 was his only Gold Cup triumph for which he can take considerable satisfaction. "When I first started training him in the two years we moved to Whatcombe, I thought he was totally gone, he had lost his enthusiasm but at Cheltenham that day he ran the race of his life. We saddled him a few weeks later for the Grand National. He only had 10st 8lb but was never in it behind Party Politics. I always thought the National was his race and trained him especially for it the following year but he never sparkled.''

Highland Wedding's 1969 National triumph, however, provides his favourite moment in racing. "We bought him with the National in mind. He was then trained at Salisbury by Peter Calver, one of my great friends, who was our stable vet for 20 years. I saw him on TV run at Sandown carrying a stone overweight. He was beaten a length and half in what was a poor race but it was the manner of the horse's run which caught my eye. It took a long time to pull him up afterwards."

He bought Highland Wedding for a syndicate headed by Charles Burns, who had horses with his late father. "Next season I really knew we had a serious racehorse. I said we would win the National with him and we did, although it took three Nationals to do it!"

There are anecdotes galore from a lifetime in racing and one concerns New World who financied his marriage to his wife, Caro, by winning the Portland Handicap. He was one of two sprinters who joined the yard from Singapore but the other supposed star was so slow Balding couldn't even win a seller with him.

"New World arrived at Tilbury on Christmas Day with a summer coat. The owners, the Shaw brothers who were in the film industry and introduced Bruce Lee, said they wanted to win the Stewards Cup, but I told them the race for him was the Portland which my father had always tried to win but never quite managed to.''

Balding first ran the horse in a conditions race at the now defunct Birmingham course where he was beaten five and a half legths by the useful Right Boy. He then didn't stay the one mile trip in the Lochinge and at Royal Ascot finished in the ruck in the Wokingham. "He had his full winter coat on, he looked awful and ran awful.''

He was squeezed out of contention in the Stewards Cup before being trained for the Portland. Balding could hardly believe his eyes when he was given just 7st, getting two and half stone from Right Boy. It was one of the few occasions he has ever been tempted to have a punt. "He broke the track record and I had £200 on at 33-1.''

His contribution over the years has been immense. He has proved a mentor for discovering such diverse riding talent as Richard Linley, Bob Champion, Adrian Maguire and Tony McCoy and introducing the first public company, BTRB, to racing. "We have the best promoted product which appears every day in national papers, and if you didn't know about racing, you didn't want to. But at the same time it didn't make the the sport any more accessible. There was an air of elitism about it, but BTRB offered an avenue for the ordinary person to get involved and feel a part of it.''

Balding has played a leading role in racing's administration and for 40 years has been chairman of the National Hunt Trainers Federation. He has witnessed major changes, especially in safety. "There were no factors when I started. How many were declared was how many that ran. The starter told jockeys, 'Triers at the front, non-triers behind' and they ran accordingly. At Taunton, there would be 35 lining up for a novice hurdle and there were no safety helmets. The safety limit is now 14.

"I once employed very few stable girls, now there are more girls than boys. I don't like to see them riding over jumps. That's not to say they are not good enough, it's just that i don't want to see them hurt.''