John Attfield, longtime stalwart of the racing world, died this morning at the age of 59 after a sudden illness.

Attfield has most recently been an assistant trainer to Tom Morley, but also worked for Kelly Breen, trained on his own, and worked for his father, Hall of Famer Roger Attfield, starting out.

Attfield was born in England and worked with multiple graded stakes winners With Approval, Play the King, and others in his early years with his father before coming to the United States to work for the likes of Jane Cibelli and Brian Lynch. Attfield was an assistant to Kelly Breen for six years, where multiple graded stakes winners Miss Sky Warrior and Firenze Fire and multiple stakes winner November Rein were favorites.

Breen said Monday that Attfield had been “easy to have an assistant,” and the two understood each other well.

“We had a lot of wins, a lot of good times together,” said Breen. “He was just a respectable horseman. Really on his game. We hit it off well from the very beginning. We thought alike.”

Although Attfield looked fondly on the barn’s biggest superstars, Breen said his attachment and dedication to horses was based on who they were, not always what they did. He was known to gallop in the mornings, serve as a groom when the stable was short-handed, and even sleep in front of a favored shipper’s stall. He was remembered by former employers as an animal person generally, as evidenced by the barn cat he looked after, who was named Firenze Kitten.

When Breen packed up his New York string, Attfield went to work for trainer Tom Morley, who said it took “about 20 minutes” after hearing the news that Attfield was not relocating to New Jersey with Breen to decide to pick him up.

Since then, he became a fixture in Morley’s barn, managing strings at Fair Grounds and Saratoga. For Morley, Attfield was a rare combination of old school horsemanship and a willingness to grasp new technology, such as the heart rate monitors and GPS systems he convinced Morley to use in workouts. He was also known around the backstretch for his rather bright suits, always chosen to match owners’ silks on race day. (Morley jokes he eventually banned Attfield’s bright orange suit not because it was Kelly Breen’s signature color but because of how blinding it was.)

Morley, who was with Attfield when he died, said the assistant was a four-time cancer survivor.

“We’d all been prepared for John to die at some point, but we did not think it was going to be this week,” said Morley.

Attfield had been in the barn at Aqueduct yesterday, timing breezers and keeping the operation running — just as he would have wanted to be, up until the last moment.

“We have all learned an enormous amount from John Attfield in our operation,” said Morley. “You can’t deny the love this man had for his team, his horses, and so many people’s children, including my own. Anyone’s kids John met, John loved like they were his own. He wasn’t just a great horseman. He was a great man.

“It was him who walked me off the turf course in Saratoga when I thought I wanted to give up and never train a horse again [after the breakdown of The Big Torpedo, this summer]. It was him who met me at the barn at 4 a.m. the next morning and told me to get on. To remember that horse with the love we always will.

“Like all gentlemen of his era, he was dry-witted, cantankerous and grumpy, but by god, he could make you laugh. And he could teach you.”