Point-to-Point racing and its role in developing jumpers

Article by Daragh Ó Conchúir

There has always been something special about a well organised point-to-point. 

It is social, in the truest sense. A communal gathering of like-minded people, with a love of rural pursuits and lifestyle.

It is racing at its purest too, founded on the genesis of steeplechasing in the Irish county of Cork in 1752. That was when Edmund Blake and Cornelius O’Callaghan chose to resolve which of them possessed the best steed by racing the four and a half miles from Buttevant Church to its Doneraile counterpart. Steeple to steeple, taking whatever route they saw fit and clearing whatever obstacle was in the way. Naturally, the money was down to increase the stakes.

Good horses often emerged from this sphere, with Tom Costello a legendary source of Gold Cup winners, but that wasn’t the raison d’être. Pointing was a leisurely pursuit. There was no competition for National Hunt trainers when it came to the acquisition of stores or younger jumping stock.

The landscape began to change with the introduction of an autumn point-to-point season by Irish authorities to make up for the fixtures lost by the outbreak of Foot And Mouth in 2001 but the last decade has seen an increasing commercialism that has altered the face not just of point-to-pointing, but of racing under Rules.

This has only accelerated by the reduction in availability of the good Flat handicappers, now flowing to jurisdictions such as Hong Kong and Australia with mammoth prize money justifying the eye-watering sums that National Hunt people could not justify.

There is always a risk with buying thoroughbreds but for end users, that is alleviated somewhat when there is form with proven depth. Of course there is a premium on that.

The results speak for themselves when it comes to the question of whether or not the sector is developing jumpers to a requisite level. Just look at the recently concluded Cheltenham Festival, where of the 27 races, nine were won by graduates of the point-to-point circuit – eight from Ireland and one from Britain. That latter success was in the point-to-point feature, the Foxhunter Chase, as Sine Nomine repelled the strong raiding challenge for Fiona Needham, her father Robin Tate and jockey John Dawson.

What is notable though is the high level of achievement. Of the other eight graduates from the point scene to score, five did so in Grade 1s: Slade Steel (Supreme Novices’ Hurdle), Ballyburn (Gallagher Novices’ Hurdle), Fact To File (Brown Advisory Novices’ Chase), Jasmin De Vaux (Champion Bumper) and Stellar Story (Albert Bartlett Novices’ Hurdle). There was a clean sweep of placings by ex-pointers in the Brown Advisory and Albert Bartlett.

This is not anything like a one-off, of course. When Colin McKeever’s Loughanmore winner, Ballyburn, sauntered to a 13-length triumph in the Gallagher, he was the fourth alumnus of the sphere to land the spoils in that particular Grade 1 in five seasons. Slade Steel was the fourth to bag the Supreme in the same period. That’s Constitution Hill, Shishkin, Envoi Allen and Bob Olinger we’re talking about between the two.

There is depth in terms of the handlers producing these talents also. Donnchadh Doyle, whose brothers Seán and Cormac are established providers with the likes of Monkfish, Holywell and Bravemansgame included on the roll of honour, was the only provider to have multiple winners, having guided Fact To File and Stellar Story to successes at Bellharbour and Castlelands.

Apart from the aforementioned McKeever, Pierce Power, Colin Bowe, Euguene O’Sullivan, Stuart Crawford and Warren Ewing had the satisfaction of seeing former charges deliver on the biggest stage.

It is significant too that the octet won their maidens at eight different venues, illustrating the calibre of the tracks.

The growth in the sector and the unarguable evidence that this system is working is seen in figures provided by Irish point-to-point website, p2p.ie. If we take the past 15 completed jumps season from 2008/09 to 2022/2023, we see a progression from when graduates won 725 track races, eight of which were at Grade 1 level, to a stunning 1570 winners and 27 elite successes. The total number of black-type winners increases from 39 to 98.

Since 2015/16, the number of winners has only dropped below 1400 once, and that was in the Covid-impacted 2019/2020 term. 

While the number of winners has largely been consistent – 1718 in 2020/21 was a high-water mark – the quality continues on an upward climb, with 27 Grade 1s secured by Irish point products in two of the last three seasons with completed figures.

And that is why the prices continue to rise. The record for the most expensive point-to-pointer was set in November 2020, when JP McManus shelled out £570,000 for Jonbon at the Goffs UK Sale in Yorton after the full-brother to multiple Grade 1 winner Douvan had cantered to a 15-length triumph for Ellmarie Holden, Paul Holden and Michael Shefflin.

At the Punchestown Festival Sale 12 months ago, it was a mare that attracted the biggest bonanza, as Mags O’Toole spent €500,000 on behalf of Brian Acheson’s Robcour ownership banner for Qualimita, who had dotted up in a Fairyhouse maiden by 30 lengths for Walter Connors and Bowe.

A highest price for a British filly pointer was set last May, when Saunton Surf was sold in May for £175,000 by Brad Gibbs to Warren Greatrex at the Goffs Spring Sale in Doncaster. 

That was matched last December, as Just A Rose was bought by Tom Malone, for British champion trainer Paul Nicholls, from Tom Ellis and breeders Sarah and Nigel Faulks. The same buying combination snapped up Will Biddick’s facile Badbury Rings victor, No Drama This End for £160,000 at the Cheltenham Festival Sale in March.

Meanwhile, Eddie O’Leary signed a chit for €265,000 at the Tattersalls Ireland Derby Sale last June for a store that was heading in Gordon Elliott’s direction and in all, 33 horses sold for €100,000 or more at that auction, making it the third best result in Derby Sale history.

And remember, a Camelot half-brother to Altior realised a staggering €155,000 at the Tattersalls National Hunt Sale in November 2019, purchased by former Republic of Ireland soccer international Kevin Doyle from Coole House Farm on behalf of Paddy Behan Jnr. It was the highest price paid for a foal at the sale for 12 years and the third highest in its history.

While the most recent auctions might finally be suggesting a slight correction, Irish producer and trainer, Liz Doyle wasn’t far wrong when she described the point-to-point sector as ‘pandemic and recession-proof’.

Jerry McGrath is relatively new to the scene as a bloodstock agent, a role he took up upon his injury-enforced retirement at the beginning of 2022. But the Cork native had long been tasked by his boss Nicky Henderson with keeping an eye on the Irish point-to-point circuit during his time at Seven Barrows, during which he rode two Cheltenham Festival winners.

Love Envoi provided him with his first Cheltenham triumph as a buyer. Jango Baie is a Grade 1-winning novice hurdler this year and Jingko Blue is another youngster acquired from racing through the flags that has made a good transition to the track.

“It’s been well documented; it’s harder to get hold of these highly rated, staying flat horses now because there’s such a market for them abroad,” says McGrath. “Because that has happened it has narrowed where you get your jump horses from and I think that’s why maybe the point-to-point thing has come so strong. 

“Of course, it has been massively influenced by the point-to-point handlers themselves. I have the utmost respect for those lads. They go out there, they put their money on the line, they invest in horses that they like at the store sales. We’ve seen in the last three or four years, they’ve been outbidding plenty of trainers. 

“When you look at it like that, it sounds a bit bonkers that the point-to-point men are outbidding the end users, bearing in mind they have to prove the horse’s ability, with the hope  that the end user comes back and buys it as a winning point-to-pointer.”

This is why not every trainer is a fan, as they are now priced out of the market at both potential entry points –sales for stores and pointers. But in an open market, those willing to risk the most, make the most. The vital element to it all is the emergence of talented animals on a consistent basis.

The handlers are clearly discerning in their sourcing too. While there are fashionable stallions, the point graduates that delivered at Cheltenham came from a variety of sires: Flemensfirth (Ballyburn), Shantou (Stellar Story), Poliglote (Fact To File), Telescope (Slade Steel) and Tirwanako (Jasmin De Vaux) were the Grade 1 performers, while Gamut (Corbetts Cross), Milan (Better Days Ahead) and Saint Des Saints, whose three winners at the festival included Sine Nomine, completed the crop.

This is why McGrath’s priority is the model rather than the page, although pedigree has to be taken into account.

“You can have a potential superstar but if he’s a terrible mover, his longevity is going to be very short. It’s a bit like cheap speed, the two-year-old that’s going out very early. You might win a two-year-old maiden at the start of the year but will you be there at the end of the season competing in group races? Probably not. So you do have to have an athletic horse.

“Temperament definitely comes into it but at the same time, these are young horses, and their temperament can be managed, especially if they go into the right hands. If you’ve got a hot and buzzy horse, it doesn’t mean they’ll be hot and buzzy in two years’ time. 

“Athleticism and movement is the big thing for me. And you have to have a bit of pedigree. If they’re not bred to be a good racehorse, why would you be surprised they’re not a good racehorse?”

Pat Doyle is one of the enduring characters of the Irish point-to-point sector, having been among the pioneers for using it to sell four and five-year-olds with form before the likes of the Wexford crew of Bowe, Denis Murphy and the unrelated Doyle brothers raised the bar. He kept up with the evolution though and had at least ten graduates running at Cheltenham. The majority of them were trained by Mullins, which is no mean imprimatur.

It is 50 years this year since Doyle broke future dual Champion Hurdle winner Monksfield as a two-year-old. Later on, he pre-trained Minnehoma for his good friend Roddy O’Byrne to sell. Minnehoma followed Cheltenham success with a famous Grand National victory in 1994.

Bob Olinger, Appreciate It, First Lieutenant, Shattered Love, Colreevy, Readin Tommy Wrong, Bacardys, Commander Of Fleet, Champ Kiely and Brindisi Breeze are just some of the other Grade 1 and Cheltenham winners to have emerged from his academy.

The very latest off the production line, Ballycahane winner In The Age, sold at the Cheltenham Festival Sale for £100,000 to Ryan Mahon for the leading British trainer at the festival, Dan Skelton. The headline act at this boutique offering was the purchase of Echoing Silence by Peter Molony from Sam Curling and Correna Bowe for £410,000, to be trained by Henry de Bromhead. 

This sale has produced the last two Gold Cup runners-up, Bravemansgame and Gerri Colombe, while three of its graduates from the 2023 sale participated in the Champion Bumper this March, including the runner-up Romeo Coolio and third-placed Jalon D’Oudairies. 

“The biggest trick is selling them to good trainers,” Doyle relates. “I’ve been very, very lucky with Willie Mullins, Henry de Bromhead and fellas like that buying horses off me that turned out to be successful. I’m an open market for anyone to buy horses off but Willie Mullins (had) seven or eight horses I sold him running at Cheltenham.”

For a long time, Doyle and his fellow Irish handlers had this niche to themselves. The likes of Sophie and Tom Lacey were trading but the point-to-point arena remained Corinthian in spirit and action. 

The old traditions are gradually being cast off with the likes of Gold Cup runner-up Santini (Ed and Polly Walker) and Ahoy Senor (Melanie and Philip Rowley) having emerged and with handlers of the calibre of Tom Ellis and Gina Andrews, Bradley Gibbs, Fran and Charlie Poste, Josh Newman and Kayley Woollacott and Will Biddick in the vanguard of those guiding young talent.

Tom Lacey is now training under Rules, but having produced dual Champion Chase winner Energumene, Sebastapol (this pair won two divisions of the same open maiden at Larkhill in January 2018), Blackbow, Kimberlite Candy and the most expensive British pointer ever Interconnected (sold for £220,000 after winning at Larkhill in a month after Energumene and Sebastapol), remains an ardent advocate of the division on his native shore.

“I think it’s irreplaceable. I don’t believe there’s any better grounding for jumps horses than point-to-points,” Lacey states definitively.

“Ten years ago you could send a well-educated horse 80 per cent fit to an English point-to-point and you’d win it stylishly. Now you need to be well educated and be a 100% fit. There’s plenty of depth there now. There’s more and more people doing it and you’ve got plenty of good, sharp lads doing it.

“I think there’s still an element where the British point-to-point programme needs to be tweaked… For example, this is the time where your four-year-olds start coming to fruition. You know where you are with them, you’re ready to run and this weekend they’ve got a five-year-old and over maiden point-to-point. Well that’s just stupid.

“They have also introduced these point-to-point Flat races. The issue I have with those is they have diluted the maidens. They have taken away a lot of the young horses which would traditionally have run in a point-to-point. And now the people that don’t want to be commercial fiddle around for a season running around in these point-to-point Flat races and to be quite honest with you, they’re dirt. You won’t sell a horse out of one of them. They should never have been allowed to come in.”

Does it damage the reputation of the product?

“Yes it does. All of the boys operating on a commercial basis won’t entertain them. If you want to sell a horse, it needs to be able to jump 16 or 18 fences and do it nicely.”

McGrath has plenty of praise for the British scene.

“There is talent emerging and we’d love for it to be stronger again but sometimes, people struggle to get a grasp on the English form, whereas a lot of people know the Irish point-to-point handlers better, they know the tracks better and can get a better handle on the form but at the same time, it doesn’t mean that there’s not lots of good horses come out of English point-to-points.

“I think sometimes there can be a bit of value and when you are buying pointers, it is important to remember that it is budget driven and you don’t always have to shell out the big numbers to buy a good horse.”

Lacey and Doyle are in agreement about the importance of producing a racehorse over a sales horse. It is the only way to ensure longevity as a commercial entity.

“There’s no point trying to sell a mediocre horse for a lot of money ‘cos you’ll only ever do it once,” Lacey declares. “We had a horse won at Dingley Point-To-Point (by 16 lengths) called Space Safari. Bryan Drew was there that day and rang me up that evening and said, ‘What do you want for that horse?’ I said, ‘Bryan, I can’t sell him to you. Don’t ask me any more questions but I can’t sell him to you.’ And that was because I wanted him to come back and buy another one.”

“I don’t want to sell a bad horse,” is the Doyle mantra. “I had a few horses in Cheltenham at the (February) sale. They made good store prices, but I explained to the guys that bought them, ‘This is what these horses are capable of doing. They’re good horses. Are they Saturday horses? Maybe not, but they’ll win races.’”

When a vendor is known for this sort of honesty, buyers take note when he vouches for a horse. Doyle’s word was enough for Willie Mullins to acquire Appreciate It, Champ Kiely and Readin Tommy Wrong despite them failing to win their maidens but they are all Grade 1 victors now. 

And of course, Nicky Henderson bought Constitution Hill because of his respect for Warren Ewing and his former No 1 jockey Barry Geraghty, who had sold him future Gold Cup winner, Bobs Worth. Constitution Hill finished second in his point at Tipperary, after making a terrible mistake at the last. What’s more, the physical exertions left a toll. It was only the word of men he knew and trusted that maintained Henderson’s interest. As we know, the Blue Bresil seven-year-old has yet to lose a race on the track and sauntered to a Champion Hurdle success last year before illness ruled him out this time around.

Some horses are just slower developers. Grand National winner Corach Rambler, who ran a stormer to be third in the Gold Cup and is a short price to back up his Aintree heroics, took five attempts to win a point for John Walsh, finally getting his head in front in a six-year-old’s and older maiden at Monksgrange in September 2020. So a relationship and trust with the vendor is critical.

“A very good example was Love Envoi,” McGrath explains. “She didn’t show herself very well on the day and there was a minor vetting issue but Seán (Doyle) assured me it had not stopped her and it would have surprised him if it ever did cause an issue. We paid thirty-eight grand for her and she turned out to be a Cheltenham Festival winner, a multiple black-type filly and a Grade 1-placed filly. That was a perfect example of trust.”

It is noteworthy how often Mullins’ name crops up in the course of these discussions, reflective perhaps of his dominance. What is interesting is how often he gets his business done privately, via his agent, Harold Kirk, with Pierre Boulard his man on the ground in France when it comes to acquiring the talent emerging from French three and four-year-old hurdles. Lacey is adamant that this, more than anything else, is why he is the leviathan of jump racing.

“People say, ‘What’s Willie Mullins doing that allows him to get all these best horses?’”, the Cottage Field Stables conditioner begins.

“If you’ve got a good horse and you genuinely believe it’s a graded horse, if you ring Harold Kirk and say, ‘Harold, I’ve got one for you,’ he will say, ‘What do you want for it?’ You’ll name your price and he will say, ‘I’ll have it.’

“That is what Willie Mullins does differently. He doesn’t say, ‘I’ll come back to you in a week’s time.’ The vet’s there within the week and they just get the business done. They do not sit on the fence and allow horses to be sold from underneath them. That is one of the things he does that no one else does. They are so straightforward.

“He’s got Harold Kirk working from November onwards with all the point-to-point handlers working in Ireland, with the point-to-point handlers in England. He used to come over and see all mine before Christmas, see which ones he liked, asked me which ones I liked and if they did what I expected them to do, I rang him up and said, ‘Harold, you should buy that horse.’

“‘I’ll have it.’ 

“That’s what Willie Mullins does that no one else does.”

Horse Racing Ireland has intimated a willingness to develop a programme of bumpers and hurdles for three-year-old store horses, while there is a programme of junior NH hurdles in Britain, though for paltry prize money.

This comes on the back of the success of the French programme of three-year-old hurdles that is backed with significant prize money by France Galop and is producing major talent. The first of the year was held at Compiegne on March 5, with the connections of Willie De Houelle landing €27,140 for a four-length triumph, the total prize fund amounting to €59,000. 

The Beaumec De Houellle gelding is trained by Arnaud Chaille-Chaille, who also was responsible for the sire winning at Grade 1 level. His best graduate, however, is Galopin Des Champs, who won a four-year-old hurdle at Auteuil on debut before relocating to Ireland and becoming a two-time Gold Cup hero.

McGrath has a number of Gallic contacts and sourced the highly promising juvenile, Sir Gino for Henderson from an April maiden at Auteuil. He is a huge fan of a system that also produced the new Champion Hurdler, State Man.

Doyle has reservations about racing moving in this direction though concedes that he would get involved in two-year-old sales if they were to come on stream.

For his part, Lacey believes that this method, while suitable to French-breds, is not necessarily transferable.

“I’d be very old school,” says Lacey. “I think we are all expecting too much too soon from a lot of these young horses. The powers that be want us to follow the French model with Irish pedigrees. We’re breaking a lot of horses at two, turning them away, bringing them back at three and turning them away. They’re still not ready. I don’t know if it’s the breed or the way we produce them or the way we train them or what, but our horses just don’t come to hand like they do in France.”

And you have to do right by the horse.

“Course you have. But when Energumene was here, the ease with which he did everything was astonishing. The gulf between a good horse and a Grade 1 horse is vast. You see it on the gallops, it just floats everywhere. Everything is so effortless.”

He jokes that he had to buy a lot of stores to find that Grade 1 winner – to be fair, Energumene is a six-time Grade 1 winner – but that is the role the handlers play, taking on risk, filtering the wheat from the chaff. 

“They go out, they put their own money on the line, they buy these horses as three-year-olds, they take all the risk. They break them. They canter, they school, they gallop the horses, they run the horses in a short space of time. Ideally they like to sell them as four-year-olds, sometimes they carry over till they’re five-year-olds. The good ones go on and make a lot of money and a profit, but there’s an awful lot of horses don’t even see the track, they don’t make the grade. And there’s plenty ones aren’t as good as they want them to be and if they’re lucky, they wipe their faces with them. That’s why they need the big priced ones because they’re covering the cost of the ones we don’t see or hear about.”

High risk, high reward, providing the ultimate quality control service. 

Still special.

Pre-trainers and their influence on Irish NH racing

Article by Daragh Ó Conchúir

Pre-trainers have always existed but there is far more prevalence in recent times, be that to lighten the loads of trainers themselves or, ever increasingly, within a business model of providing licensed conditioners with ready-to-run horses, or as near as dammit.

It was interesting to see former Irish Racehorse Trainers’ Association chief executive, Michael Grassick opine in The Irish Field on December 17 that pre-trainers were actually impacting negatively on the men and women he used to represent – and indeed was one of, before handing over the reins to his son, Michael Jnr – as it made it more difficult for them to retain staff.

Surely, though, the only reason a yard uses such services is because it doesn’t have the time, manpower or expertise to do the job. It makes no sense for trainers to add to an already hefty catalogue of expenses if they and their staff are twiddling their thumbs for “three, four and five months,” as Grassick seemed to suggest.

Trainer Tom Mullins isn’t a fan of the point-to-point production line in Ireland, believing that more potential owners are choosing to invest in stores with a view to a quick return at the boutique NH Sales, rather than going in on a young horse to race. But that route is available to everyone within the industry. If you want to work full-time with horses, you have to find a niche, or create one.

We all know Barry Geraghty as the former champion jockey who won the Grand National, and counted two Gold Cups, five Champion Chases, four Champion Hurdles and two Stayers’ Hurdles among his 43 Cheltenham winners. 

Long before he called time on his career in 2020, Geraghty was pre-training young horses at home in Hallstown, just outside Dunshaughlin, and moving them on, most of the time through the point field via Warren Ewing and Aidan Fitzgerald. His second Gold Cup triumph came in 2013 on Bobs Worth, a horse he had sold to Nicky Henderson as an unbroken store.

There have been plenty others that have had good careers but Supreme Novices’ Hurdle winner, Champion Hurdle favourite Constitution Hill and Tipperary 4yo maiden runner-up, does have the potential to be the best of his many graduates.

“It’s getting harder at all levels,” as Geraghty explained. “With the price of foals, the price of stores, it’s harder to get what you’re looking for. Bobs Worth, he was bought as a yearling and sold as a four-year-old unbroken store. As I got older, I would have got involved with Warren Ewing buying stores and going straight to the point-to-point field with them. But then we’ve been buying foals as well since then.

“For example, Constitution Hill was bought as a foal. I would have kept him for three years, broken him as a two-year-old, pre-trained him as a two-year-old, pre-trained him as a three-year-old until the autumn and then he went up to Warren’s to be trained for a point-to-point.”

John Nallen, famous for the Minella soubriquet in honour of his Clonmel hotel and who produced Minella Indo and Minella Time to win a Gold Cup and Grand National within a few weeks of one another in 2021, is another who focuses on foals. So too Walter Connors, the man who found Gold Cup winner Don Cossack as a foal in Germany, as well as ill-fated Champion Hurdle hero Espoir D’Allen and multiple Grade 1 victors Envoi Allen and Bacardys.

More can go wrong in that length of time but the outlay is lower and there is less intensity required with the work. And to be able to break them younger is a considerable advantage. 

In days of yore, National Hunt horses might not have come out of the field until they were five or six. But all athletic pursuit has advanced and science tells us that once the loading is appropriate, earlier development and conditioning work pays off in the long run.

“It’s like the underage structure with county teams, the strength and conditioning that’s being done with 15- and 16-year-olds. They’re your two-year-olds and three-year-olds. So then you’ve a young lad coming out of minors and he’s as big as (GAA footballer of the year) David Clifford.

“And it’s only teaching them graft. It’s not hardship. You’re not galloping them. You’re conditioning them. If you’re to keep a horse right through from a foal to running in a point-to-point or a bumper, it’s an awful lot easier physically to break them at two than it is at three, but there’s great development in it for them too, both physically and mentally. I think you can connect with them well. Because you’re not having the struggle that you might have with a bigger horse, it makes them more amenable, which is a positive thing for when they go into training. They’ve learned rather than been taught.”

As the Meath native acknowledged, acquiring the raw material is the key starting point.

“You’re looking for the best individual you can get, in every sense and obviously a certain level of page to back it as well – sire, damsire. Your budget won’t allow you to buy perfection (so) you just have to pare back as to where you are with your budget and what are the acceptable faults.”

Judging from the laugh that greets the query about what flaws you might be willing to accept, it isn’t always straightforward.

“It’s very hard to sell one by an unfashionable sire. It doesn’t help. There’s lots of different things. A horse is probably judged at his harshest at the store sale. Whereas he goes and wins a point-to-point, his faults might be more acceptable.”

WALTER & DAVID CONNORS

Walter Connors is renowned as the pioneer of sourcing foals in France – Envoi Allen and Espoir D’Allen were in the same field at Bruno Vagne’s Elevage Allen when the Waterford man picked them out – and he chooses what route he takes to disperse his stock in accordance with those faults Geraghty refers to.

“It’s pretty random with us, the selection of what goes to the sales and what doesn’t,” Connors told me. “A horse could be backward and not fit for the sales so we might point-to-point him but it’s a blank canvas on the first of January and while we aim for the sales, there’s always one reason or another why a horse doesn’t make it and we’ll point-to-point instead.”

After the best part of three years growing up at Sluggara Farm in Dungarvan, Envoi Allen was prepped by Colin Bowe a for a facile triumph in a Ballinaboola maiden because Muhtathir was not a sire that got the market’s pulse racing. But Connors would not like to have his entire investment, or anything like it, relying on form, albeit that the decision to focus on foals is budget-driven.

“Buying foals has worked out okay for us but it’s full of risk,” the vet stated. “All you can see at that stage, is whether they’re big or small. We try and have a look at them as they’re coming along and see how they’re developing. But when did I know Envoi Allen was a good horse? When he jumped the second-last in Ballinaboola. That’s the reality of it. All we can do is try and improve the way we rear them, to make sure they get the best chance they can.

“Buying foals and selling as three-year-olds means you have a lot of capital tied up. You have three years of stock on hand before you have something to sell. Then when those horses are sold, hopefully it takes the pressure off the horses in training. I am full of admiration for the lads depending on form for everything.”

Nallen and Pat Doyle are in that latter category, though Nallen acquires foals mostly and Doyle focuses primarily on the more expensive but more immediate turnaround of stores.

Doyle, who broke Champion Hurdle legend Monksfield and subsequently educated and sold Grand National and Grade 1 winner Minnehoma as well as other top-flight victors Bob Olinger, Shattered Love, First Lieutenant and Brindisi Breeze, bought Appreciate It and Asterion Forlonge as stores the same day for €60,000 each before selling the future Grade 1 winners. 

“Nowadays horses are pretty well done from the time they’re foals,” Doyle detailed.” It’s not like it was 20 years ago. Three-year-olds weren’t touched until six weeks before sales. It’s totally different now. Most of the three-year-old stores have been to a sale as stores and they’re very professional men, the men that buy them.

“We’ve a few fellas around here and they would bring their yearlings in for the winter and probably put breaking tack on them and drive them on long reins, and probably do that for the months of December, January and February, and probably do it again their two-year-old days. They’re so well-handled, horses are a lot more forward than they were.
“We don’t like to do things too quick. It actually takes me probably between four and five months to get a horse to where I want to get him. You will get the odd horse that will get there in four months. We break them, let them out for a month and bring them back in the middle of August. We do an awful lot of conditioning work before we’d do anything else. You’re talking five good months.“

There is an important theme here. Sometimes, the charge is levelled at the point-to-point producers that they don’t leave much in the tank. But that wouldn’t make sense from a business perspective because you want clients to return. You don’t get the best of the horse by finding out about them before you need to.

Minella Indo is another fine example of the benefit of patience. Nallen bought him as a foal from breeder Dick Lalor, of Carrigeen fame, and kept him until he was five.

“He could have made it at four but we always want to do right by the horse and played it cautiously with him,” Nallen revealed. “He is a Beat Hollow, it’s a good family, but his dam was 22 and people thought we were a bit mad buying out of a 22-year-old mare. He came through the system well and we just didn’t rush him to get him out at four. 

“When we saddled him up at Dromahane, the day after St Patrick’s Day in 2018, he was ready and he won easily. And the rest is history… It’s about getting them over the line. Find out as much as you can about their ability without wrecking them.”

That said, when you have them for years rather than months, there are various landmarks along the way that you know should be hit.

“You’re going through all the stages from a foal and a two-year-old to three-year-old,” Geraghty noted. “Some will grow, some won’t grow. There are different stages and some will grow into a horse you’d hope them to be and Constitution Hill would have been that horse as an individual, but desperately laid back. But he always found everything really easy and it was then a case of doing everything right for what you would expect a horse to do at every stage. But it’s only when you look under the hood that you see what’s there. It’s only when you give them a squeeze and with him (when he went in training with Ewing), it was instant.”

Unfortunately for Doyle, he chose the same point-to-point for future multiple Grade 1 winner Appreciate It as Envoi Allen ran in and his charge tired to finish third having gone toe-to-toe with his good friend Connors’ star. The vital win was recorded next time out and Willie Mullins bought him privately.

Mullins sends a lot of his horses to Sonny Carey for the other side of pre-training – readying horses for a full-time training regime. While Carey also buys a few stores himself and has a permit to train a few horses on the track for family and friends, it is breaking horses for trainers or readying them for their routines that is the core of his operation, which is based in Arthur Moore’s yard outside Naas. 

Appreciate It, Laurina and Captain Guinness are just some of high-calibre talent he and his team have been entrusted with.

“The way I work it is we break them, educate them and get them ready to go into a string so that from the day they arrive into the yard, they can just go into the string,” said Carey.

“It all depends on what the trainer will want. Some trainers will want them to just fit into the string. Some trainers will want to know how good they are, what you think of them. Owners sometimes want to find out if a horse is worth putting into training. It just all depends on the client. And the horse.

“We more or less start them off steady, get them hacking away, step them up to cantering away then and if the trainer wants them worked, they can start working and be schooled along as well. 

“It’s all in collaboration with the trainer but it’s down to the individual horse. Some horses will take plenty and be ready for rocking and some horses fall away or get little injuries or the normal young horse kind of things. They’ll all get their ringworm and they’ll get sick at some stage, just the things that young horses get. It’s better for those things to happen in my yard than the trainer’s yard”.

Carey explained how he goes about breaking young horses.

“Everyone has their own way of doing it. It’s what works for you, isn’t it? I was lucky, my father did it for I’d say the guts of 50 years and I learned it off him.

“You’re handling, starting them lunging, getting them used to a bit in their mouth, start with a roller, which simulates a girth. Once they take that, you’ve no problem and we’ll stick a second rope on them then and start turning them on a long reign, which simulates a rider steering them. Some horses would do no better for three weeks driving than they would three days. They just have it. Some horses need more driving.

“After that, in the stable, you just start lying over them, patting them away. And slowly get in on them and then you’ll start riding them around the box, putting your leg on them, teaching them. We’ll go from the box then to the lunge ring, ride them in the lunge ring and then introduce another horse into the lunge ring with them after a day or two. 

“Then we might have four or five in the ring together then so that when they head out to the gallop, they’re fairly straightforward.”

Captain Guinness is an example of the advantage of having more time with horses and breaking them younger. He won quickly for Henry de Bromhead but proof that the lemon hadn’t been squeezed to the pips was that he was a Grade 2 victor just last November, three years later. 

“For a National Hunt horse now you’d be better off breaking them at two and get a little pop into them. That’s in a perfect world. Store horses are so well handled now coming from the sales that there’s not much work in them in that way. There’s a massive difference between a sales horse and a homebred.

“We broke Captain Guinness at two, he came back in at three and came back in again at four. When he came back it was just hacking away steady, getting miles under the built and schooling him away. He’d go on another little break then and come back in. We had him cantering away and when he went down to Henry as a four-year-old he’d a good bit done, over a good period of time. He won as a four-year-old for Henry.”

Carey never had any interest in going into training full-time, more enthused by teaching youngsters. 

“You’ll never be rich but you’ll always have a wage. We bring along a few horses ourselves and we’ve been lucky trading the last few years and that slots into it as well. We’d always have a store or two and we’d always have a yearling or two as well for the Flat. We might run a couple over in France and have had a bit of luck there.”
Carey was almost apologetic as he continually reverted to the importance of the raw material. But it’s the key tenet of the pre-training process. It can’t be a one-size-fits-all routine.

“Treat them as individuals. We’d a filly gone away there that you couldn’t get a second rope on her. She kept kicking herself. So we had to skip that step. We had to ride her rather than drive her. But you’ll get that. We’d a horse last year, we had to ride him on the walker because he kept bolting. So that was what we did to get him to accept the rider. There’s lots of different things that can come up and it’s all about the individual.”

Clearly, while the process is vital, it will never make a bad horse a world beater. But it can turn a potentially good one into a plug if it isn’t done properly. We’ll give the last word to Geraghty.

“The most important thing is that you’ve a nice horse in the first place. It’s a bit like the silk purse. You need the horse. A good pre-training system will make the best of a horse, but there’s no magic.”