Michael Tabor such as you’ve by no means seen him earlier than as he talks chasing ‘utopia’ with marvel horse City of Troy, his bid to purchase West Ham and discovering the elixir of youth at 83

Michael Tabor didn’t get to where he is in life by divulging secrets but, on this occasion, he is happy to make an exception.

‘I go on the treadmill three times a week,’ Tabor declares with unmistakable pride – and so he should; he celebrated his 83rd birthday on Monday. ‘I do 75 minutes, each session. I was on before breakfast today. It’s so important; I feel so much better for it. It becomes a drug, I suppose.’

Tabor, one of racing’s most influential figures and a hugely successful businessman, doesn’t tend to give interviews (it’s been at least 12 years since his last) but ahead of an evening that plays to all he loves about top-level sport – history, brilliance, drama – he has agreed to this rare audience.

‘If I don’t do it, I feel guilty,’ he expands. ‘Swimming is a great exercise. I can swim but I’m not a great swimmer. It takes me half an hour to do a minute, if you get my gist! So I speed walk, that’s what I do. I set an incline of five per cent and speed of 5mph.

‘I’ve been doing it now… ooh it goes back a long way. In 1996, I didn’t feel right. I said to my wife: “I keep feel I’m getting this tick”. I went to see two doctors on Harley Street. They both said I was fine. I knew I wasn’t. So I went to see a professor in Harrow, who had been my mother’s doctor.

‘I found out I needed a stent. I’ve never had a problem since, thankfully. This professor, Avjit Lahiri, I say it to everybody, was just the most incredible person. He was fantastic, a mentor to me. So I keep exercising. I think it’s the elixir of youth. I really do.’

He smiles as he imparts the wisdom, never giving a second glance to the plate of decadent cookies that sit between us. Tabor wants City of Troy, the wonder horse he co-owns, to maintain a relentless gallop in the $7million (£5.4m) Breeders Cup Classic on Saturday but he is determined to keep doing the same.

So he goes into detail about the treadmill and its benefits but more besides. From an attempt to buy West Ham and hairdressing to unimaginable success and the importance of passion, the conversation doesn’t disappoint. This is Tabor speaking as he has never done before.

The thunder of hooves will get louder in due course but, now, Tabor is gazing into the distance as he nurses a latte, his mind flooding with memories so clear he can almost touch them. He is a terrific raconteur, with a wide-ranging love of music headed by Billy Joel and the Bee Gees.

These days, he splits his time with his wife, Doreen, between Monaco and Barbados but London will always be home and his formative days were spent in Forest Gate; he attended East Ham Grammar School, the son of a glassmaker.

‘My mother had a hairdressing salon,’ he recalls. ‘Vidal Sassoon was all the rage then! Tina Moore, Sir Bobby’s wife, used to come into the shop to get her hair done. My mother used to say what a lovely boy Bobby was, he was so polite and nice. I was going to be a hairdresser.

‘I went to the Morris School of Hairdressing in Piccadilly. I always remember the tragedy of Munich. I was shampooing a woman’s hair, in a salon called Scott’s on Oxford Street. She was reading the Evening Standard and I saw this headline of the calamity of the air disaster.

‘I remember it like yesterday, all those great footballers who were killed. Bobby Charlton thankfully escaped. It’s all part of growing up isn’t it? Certain things you remember in life, like getting the trolley bus down to Upton Park from Green Street.’

Racing, bookmaking and the bloodstock industry – he is a cornerstone of the renowned Coolmore breeding empire, based in Tipperary – have been significant drivers in ensuring Tabor holds a permanent place in the Sunday Times Rich List (ranking 212th this year with an estimated net worth of £800m) but football is a source of passion.

His favourite all-time player? Without hesitation, he announces he is Team Messi. He watches every Premier League game each weekend no matter where he is in the world, for one team above all others: his silks would have been claret and blue had that combination not already been claimed.

‘I can think back to a player called Harry Hooper – he was the first West Ham player I remember,’ says Tabor, smiling again. ‘He was a good right winger at the time. They transferred him to Sunderland. But there are so many others: Albert Foan, people wouldn’t remember him today, but he was good.

‘Who else? Malcolm Allison, Noel Cantwell. The best player, who I liked so very much, was Alan Devonshire. I met him in a lift once with Tony Gayle. Tony says: “do you remember this guy?” I didn’t at first. The lad I remembered had a big full head of hair – like I did once!

‘He’d changed a bit. He wasn’t that spindly winger, so to speak! But wasn’t he so very good? Then I remember Johnny Sissons. Johnny Dick, Vick Keeble; Andy Melville, Eddie Boddington. Frank O’Farrell, of course, who became the Manchester United manager. There’s a host of them.’

To think Tabor could have shaped the club’s fortunes. In 1996, he made an offer of £30m to take control, having sold his chain of Arthur Prince bookmakers for £27m 12 months earlier. As someone with investments in hotels, media companies and other avenues, does that rankle as the one that got away?

‘You know, life is littered with “could’ve, would’ve, should’ve” isn’t it?’ he replies. ‘I don’t regret anything. In my life, what has happened has always been for the best. That’s how I look at it. Sliding doors moments, things that are meant to happen.

‘I offered a good price, more than I thought it was worth, but it wasn’t to be. Now David Sullivan has the headache! People don’t appreciate the work behind the scenes. I like David, he’s a good guy. I first met him when he had horses with Neville Callaghan.

‘He and Karren (Brady) invited me to the Europa Conference League final last year but I couldn’t go. I get just as much enjoyment watching games on television. You do miss the atmosphere but when you get to a certain age, shall we say, to have the comforts of getting a cup of tea when you want one is nice!

‘I’m a supporter of West Ham but I must stress I love watching good football. The Premier League is beyond belief. I think it’s fantastic. I just hope that the powers that be don’t ruin it. It’s the envy of the world and if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.’

The day before we met on Park Lane, Tabor had stood on a podium at Longchamp in Paris and received a trophy after Camille Pissarro, a tough little two-year-old, had won the Prix Jean Luc Lagadere. It was, he worked out, the 475th time he had won a Group One as an owner.

His eye-catching orange-and-blue colours were first seen on racecourses in 1974, carried to victory by Royal Tornado, who cost 3000 guineas, in a little race at Haydock that he remembers ‘listening to in my study at home on the blower’ and thinking at the time that it ‘would just be a bit of fun’.

It’s turned into something considerably more. Tabor, along with partners John Magnier and Derrick Smith, has been associated with some giants of the turf and also holds the distinction of being the only English owner of a Kentucky Derby winner, thanks to Thunder Gulch in 1996.

‘I remember Gary Stevens riding him,’ Tabor says, eyes-widening. ‘I was looking over the far side of the track at Churchill Downs. I’m thinking to myself: “He’s motionless! He’s going very well!” They come around the bend. “Go on then Gary! Kick!” And he kicked and it was over.’

Yet success hasn’t diluted the joy. It was obvious as he collected Pisarro’s prize what it all meant to him – smiles and laughter of that nature are not forced. Racing – the second-highest attended spectator sport in Britain, he points out – should be fun.

‘Once you get tired, it’s over,’ he claps his hands for effect. ‘If you don’t have that enthusiasm in any sport, once the enthusiasm disappears? But, thankfully, my enthusiasm is still there to win those big races as indeed I would say all of our team is. Derrick and John and all the boys. We want to win.

‘I wasn’t interested in racing until I left school. A friend of my father’s opened a betting shop when the Betting Shop Act came in and I said to myself: ‘That’s what I want to do.’ I had become interested in dog racing.

‘A few of the boys from the youth club I went to used to go to Hendon Dogs, which is now Brent Cross, on Monday and Friday. I went there and I thought to myself: “all these people coming here…” I was quite good at mental arithmetic. It just appealed to me, the atmosphere and what have you.

‘In life, you must have passion. My son, Ashley, made a speech at Exeter University once, he had been awarded a doctorate. He had to get up in front of 4,000 students from all over the world, he’s got his gown and mortar on. He says his mum and dad are very proud etc.

‘Then he begins: “My father says that he’s never worked in his life”. There is a big hush. What does he mean by that? He carries on. “When he’s working”, he says, “He’s on holiday. When he’s on holiday, he’s working”. In other words, it’s all the same. I’ve never worked because I just love what I do.’

He means it. The enthusiasm that leaps out of every word as we discuss names such as High Chaparral and Montjeu, Found and Hurricane Run, Auguste Rodin, Entrepreneur and a loveable rogue called Dr Massini, whose quirks prevented him fulfilling his talent.

There is something different in the tone, however, when we come full circle to talk about the main man, City of Troy. Tabor told this correspondent at Newmarket last October he was ‘our Frankel’ after he had careered away with the Dewhurst Stakes and was aware of the words he used.

To be clear, he never once suggested that City of Troy was better than the flying machine, trained by the late Sir Henry Cecil, who stole hearts. He simply wanted to illustrate that trainer Aidan O’Brien had a unique equine talent on his hands and his judgment has been spot on.

Leaving behind a run that was too bad to be true in the 2000 Guineas, City of Troy, with his bay coat and flaxen tail, has powered through the summer in a blaze of glory, winning the Epsom Derby, the Coral Eclipse and the Juddmonte International. Now one peak remains.

Adding the Breeders Cup Classic – a race on dirt that asks questions of horse and rider like no other, the Holy Grail to everyone at Coolmore – to that c.v. would put City of Troy on a pedestal of his own. The thought of it challenges a man who deals in facts and figures to dream.

‘If you are into tennis, you will know there are players brought up on hard courts,’ he says. ‘When you put them on a grass court, it takes them a while to get accustomed to it. It’s very difficult. You know watching football – whoever goes away, it’s always stacked against them.

‘So we are playing away from home. In my opinion, he is up against it. It’s a short straight. I think the horse that will be most suited to it is Fierceness. I hope I’m wrong, I want our horse to win.’

But be under no illusion this colt can win.

‘And if he does?’ Tabor asks. He pauses, before delivering the conclusion. ‘I would be ecstatic. It would be like Thunder Gulch all over again. It will be utopia.’