Cavalor Trainer of the Quarter - Joseph Murphy - who saddled Cercene to win the Gp.1 Coronation Stakes at Royal Ascot
“I have been training for fifty years. Fifty years waiting for a Group One winner, we have been second and third in Group Ones, so we’ve been knocking on the door, but didn’t open it – today, we opened it. This is fifty years of work by the family, going from a small yard, switching from National Hunt to Flat, and buying horses and believing that they are going to be good. It is a lifetime's ambition to have a Group One winner.”
So said Joe Murphy at Royal Ascot after saddling Cercene to become the longest-priced winner of the Coronation Stakes, which deservedly earns him our Trainer of the Quarter.
Murphy trained his first winner in 1977 and has enjoyed a steady stream of success in Group 2 and Group 3 races, despite the wait for a Group 1. Gustavus Weston, Only Mine, Euphrasia and Ardbrae Lady were probably his best-known horses before Cercene delivered something of a surprise, though her form certainly didn’t reflect her long odds.
Now that the dust has settled, Murphy has a chance to reflect on Cercene’s achievement, although it was business as usual at his Crampscastle yard in Fethard, County Tipperary, when Vorfreude won the Ulster Derby at Down Royal the following afternoon, breaking his maiden at the sixth time of asking, having run up against some very good horses but nevertheless never finishing out of the first three this season.
“Cercene is just a really beautiful filly to have,” says Murphy. “The secret to her is to have the courage not to work her. When she’s fit we just leave her to herself, she seems to know. She may be small but she has a strong physique and a very strong, healthy constitution. She loves her work and she loves being in training. After Ascot we planned to give her a break for a week, but you could see straight away she wanted to be out on the gallops and in her usual routine. She was ridden out on Tuesday, back in her happy place.”
It is hard to know why Cercene was sent off at 33-1, having finished so well in the Irish 1000 Guineas and with many of the Coronation Stakes runners behind her at the Curragh. Now the plans, not the odds, are big.
“We are playing with the Irish Oaks in our minds, but really we’d be more aiming for the Nassau Stakes and Matron Stakes and the Breeders’ Cup, the gaps fit in quite well.”
Murphy acknowledges the help of his wife Carmel, son Joseph and daughter-in-law Olive, and the whole team at Crampscastle, “all good staff” and reveals Fethard is the perfect training centre. “The farm has always been a training establishment, originally Larry Keating was here and it has all the facilities, the original grass gallop and a nine-furlong (1800m) and seven-furlong (1400m) sand and fibre gallops, plus a three-furlong (600m) warm-up.”
Reflecting on his early beginnings in Kilkenny with his first two horses, Haybob and Vibrax, Murphy was privileged to be a part of what he describes as a “wonderful academy” under Willie O’Grady at Killeen. “There were so many great names there, Eddie O’Grady, Timmy Hyde, Mouse Morris, it was an unbelievable academy. A wonderful place to be and to get insight into the training of racehorses.”
That insight has certainly stood well to Murphy and with the likes of Lord Massusus, Vorfreude and Shiota, all, like Cercene, on an upward career path, it shouldn’t be another long wait until his next Group One.