Gavin Cromwell - the leading dual-purpose trainer
/Words by Daragh Ó Conchúir
Gavin Cromwell has just arrived at Goresbridge for the Point-to-Point and National Hunt Horses-in-Training Sale.
This is off-Broadway fare, with a top-priced lot of €62,000 taken home by Charles Byrnes. Only a handful of Irish trainers are active. Most of the stock is bound for Britain.
It offers a glimpse as to why Cromwell is no longer a farrier but an eight-time Grade One and six-time Cheltenham Festival-winning trainer, with three victories in Prestbury Park’s signature championship contests.
He may now be officially categorised in a so-called Big Four in the Irish jumps game but is bemused by the association with Messrs Mullins, Elliott and de Bromhead given their relative rolls of honour. His market remains primarily at far lower levels.
Three days previously, Cromwell acquired three horses at the Tattersalls December Yearling Sale. Lest one has forgotten, the Meath man has saddled group winners on the Flat too, at two of the most exalted venues of that sphere, ParisLongchamp and Ascot. He has enjoyed the thrill of Royal success at the latter course twice.
Princess Yaiza scored in the Prix de Royallieu in 2018, nine months after Raz De Maree delivered in the Welsh Grand National. Raz de Maree was a 13-year-old gelding galloping over nearly 3m6f on heavy ground and jumping 18 fences (four were omitted). About three and a half years later, two-year-old filly Quick Suzy scorched to glory in the 5f Queen Mary Stakes on good-to-firm going at Royal Ascot.
The three yearlings were bought for an accumulated £108,000, a Ghaiyyath colt being the most expensive at £40,000. Later on, Cromwell would add another trio to his burgeoning army, costing a grand total of €49,000 between them. The €25,000 for Aspurofthemoment is his largest single outlay.
They type of horses he has bought over these few days not only magnify his achievements, and his talents, but offer a glimpse of his all-inclusive approach to training and sourcing, of his ambition and tireless endeavour. There is no pigeon-holing this guy. Juveniles, veterans, handicappers, elite performers, over obstacles or on the level. You have a horse with some ability, he will get it to win.
And while he has had some significant support from JP McManus in particular over jumps and Lindsay Laroche on the Flat, both relationships grew out of their attraction to his results and were cemented by continuing success thereafter. In the same way, he will train a couple of horses for Qatar Racing next season, having sold them one this year. These affiliations developed from the foundation stone of the entire operation: sourcing stock cheaply as most of his owners do not have deep pockets. If they are good, they are often acquired by people that do.
What being in Goresbridge tells us is that Gavin Cromwell is always on it, to use modern sporting parlance. He does not switch off. And the results speak for themselves.
How recently was Gavin Cromwell still a farrier? Many will be surprised to hear that he only finished “four or five years ago.” That’s after he had become a Cheltenham Champion Hurdle winner.
The 50-year-old is now a six-time Festival victor at Prestbury Park, with half of those successes coming in championship races, Flooring Porter’s Stayers’ Hurdle double arriving in the wake of Espoir D’Allen’s Champion Hurdle triumph in 2019.
His tally of winners over jumps and on the Flat continues to rise, while his numerous cross-channel raids have yielded 14 winners at a 23% clip last season in National Hunt and an even better percentage of 5/20 since the start of 2023 in the summer code.
This has been achieved within a clear business strategy that focuses on a sound financial footing while marrying that with a philosophy based on ambition, and a development of leadership techniques that have proven more essential as the operation has grown from his early days on a 14-acre greenfield site, to the 150 stables and state-of-the-art facilities on 80 acres at Danestown. That brings more staff, more owners, more suppliers. More demands.
So you develop a team around you. The likes of right-hand man Garvan Donnelly. Keith Donoghue, the jockey who helped revitalise Tiger Roll and Labaik in his days working for Cromwell’s former housemate, Gordon Elliott. Race planner, Troy Cullen. Kevin and Anna Ross, brought on board to oversee the purchase of more Flat horses, many of which have been sold at a considerable profit.
Being among the aforementioned quartet excluded from some races by Horse Racing Ireland as a strategy to increase opportunities for the rest of the trainers came as a shock. Not least because he has not had a Grade One winner in Ireland since Flooring Porter announced himself a star of the future in the Christmas Hurdle at Leopardstown four years ago. That was his fourth top-flight triumph and that tally has been doubled across the water at Cheltenham and Aintree.
For context, Willie Mullins saddled a world record 39 last season alone.
Cromwell should really be heralded as a poster boy for what is possible in what some observers have argued is an unproductive, overly polarised environment, unconducive to fresh blood breaking through.
While he would love a yard of Grade One horses and dreams of registering a maiden Group One, most of his stock comprises handicappers. Therefore, the selling angle is vital. The paradox of that model is he sees the negative impact that has had on the depth of the Flat game, as well as the National Hunt.
This all makes for a riveting conversation.
Given that there isn’t a category of race Cromwell does not have a horse or an owner for, talent acquisition is a round-the-clock consideration. And it is one of the areas he has had to outsource because of his expansion.
“Kevin and Anna Ross have been helping to buy the yearlings for the last season, and this season. That’s working out great,” he says and with good cause.
Among the selections last year are dual group-placed Fiery Lucy, who finished her season a slightly unlucky three-length fourth to Lake Victoria in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf at Del Mar. Mighty Eriu was sold to Qatar Racing after finishing second on debut and went on to be runner-up in the Queen Mary, Cromwell’s worst result from his three juvenile runners at Royal Ascot. And Chorr Dubh was sold to America for six figures after winning on debut at Gowran Park. That trio cost less than €80,000 between them.
Diego Ventura was more expensive, relatively, at €72,000 but that was at the Tattersalls Breeze-Up Sale in May. He won on debut two months later under Cromwell’s go-to Flat pilot, Gary Carroll, and was promptly sold to Wathnan Racing, transferring to the tutelage of Hamad Al Jehani in Newmarket.
“I’ve always bought all my own horses up to this but it’s very hard to find time to do everything, and then, of course, to try and find someone that you trust, so Kevin and Anna have been great for the Flat horses.
“I’m taking a run down here to Goresbridge today and it’s the lesser point-to-point horses but we have lots of lesser orders. Predominantly, it’s the lesser horses that we have.
“You’re constantly trying to think outside the box and trying to buy value, and trying to buy a horse that could potentially turn out to be a decent horse. You would always be trying to buy an unlucky horse. A horse that was second or third maybe, in some of those maidens, and the winner maybe made three or four hundred thousand. And maybe he had three or four runs, and it didn’t happen for him. Maybe he could have a fall mixed into the form.”
It brings to mind Emmet Mullins revealing in this publication last year that he always had an eye on strong finishers in point-to-point maidens. He prefers a horse galloping through the line in third to a winner hanging on. The market can miss a horse like that. When you don’t have a huge reservoir of funding, you have to be smart, identify a gap that few, if any, have noticed or have interest in.
“The other thing you have to do is, you have to take a chance. I would buy some of these horses on spec; find them and bring them home. I bought Will The Wise last year on spec, £95,000. It was as much money as I’ve ever spent on spec on a horse. But thankfully, I got someone to buy him.
“I suppose when things are going well, you can have the confidence to do that. You’ll find someone. It’s a little bit easier for me to say that than it is for a smaller trainer that has a handful of horses and no access to any owners. It is difficult but listen, I was that person one time. I remember buying a horse in Newmarket and he stood me 20 grand. I couldn’t find anybody for him, and I had to sell him to another trainer.”
But he kept going back. After stints with Dessie Hughes and Paul Kellaway, and at Flemington Racecourse, while he chased a dream of being a jockey, he took out his licence to train in 2005, having learned his trade as a farrier. Dodder Walk was his first NH winner, in Cork on April 7, 2007. Five Two broke the duck on the Flat at Dundalk on November 26, 2010. Balrath Hope bagged the Ulster Oaks two years later and Sretaw delivered a big pot with the Irish Cambridgeshire in 2014. Elusive Ivy won the JLT Handicap Hurdle and Mallards In Flight the Glencarraig Lady Handicap Chase.
By now, his services as a farrier were much in demand, with the high-flying Elliott a major client. As he notes himself, it is only until very recently that being the man that shod 2015 Gold Cup winner, Don Cossack wasn’t what people tended to mention when his name came up.
Having started with a barn for eight horses to train as a hobby, with an apartment above it that he lived in, Cromwell added a second for 13. The recession gazumped all progress but he would not be deterred. Picking up horses and making contacts brought better results. Further barns were built, housing 25, then 30 and then 50. An isolation yard was added also.
The five-furlong straight, uphill woodchip gallop has worked splendidly with the Flat juveniles ready, and while his jumpers will use it too, they are generally worked on the round, deep sand gallop complete with speedometer.
While the share in prize money is considerable, it is moving the Flat horses through the international market that really greases the wheels and facilitates the improvement of the amenities. It is a delicate balance, when you are hungry to climb the ladder and improve the quality of your string, but pragmatism ensures you are still in business next year.
“We’ve got plenty of yearlings this year and sold plenty of two-year-olds. I suppose it’s a business model that we’re buying them with the view to trading them. I have a few Flat owners, the likes of Lindsay LaRoche, who owned Princess Yaiza and Snellen, who won at Royal Ascot. Those horses are bred to race and bought to race. So that’s slightly different to the rest of the business model.
“We sold Mighty Eriu this year to Qatar and she stayed with us for a little bit. She went to Royal Ascot and I think we’re going to potentially have a couple of Qatar horses for next season. We have one three year old here at the moment for them.
“So some will stay in training, and then others are in training to be sold, whether they’re sold to existing owners, or maybe someone could buy them and they stay at the yard, remains to be seen. But it’s a business model, and it’s been working nicely. We’ve bought plenty of yearlings now for next season and hopefully they will work out.”
The prize money in Australia, Hong Kong and America puts a value, in particular, on a band of horse that cannot be replicated in Europe. So capitalising on big offers will always make sense but it does mean that the pool is thinning, in both codes, with many of those Flat horses having previously transitioned into NH athletes.
“I actually didn’t go to Newmarket Horses-in-Training Sale this year or last year. It’s so hard to buy those three year olds to go hurdling. It’s too expensive for what they are, for what we want them for. The Australian market is too good and lots of those international markets.
“We sent a few to Goffs Horses-in-Training Sale. They were looked at numerous times, and they all sold. They had won a few, but they were only at a level. We had two National Hunt horses at the sale, and they never got looked at once. It’s a world market (on the Flat), and they went to all different countries, and there’s no problem selling them. It’s a great trade. But it means we can’t buy off the Flat to go jumping or to have as good dual-purpose horses.”
Attending sales are about more than going with a shopping list.
“The lads who are getting on are the lads you’ll meet at the sales. You have to be buying your horses all the time. And sure you don’t know who you’re gonna meet. I seldom go to a sale that I don’t come home with a horse, whether I met someone and I got the horse to train, or I bought him.”
The future dividend of networking can be significant too because relationships are at the core of anything that thrives. Gavin Cromwell Racing is no different.
“You spend your whole time trying to surround yourself with good people and if you can keep adding to that, it makes everything work better, and it makes life a lot easier. Someone said to me one day, ‘You spend all your time trying to make yourself redundant.’
“The system is there, and the people are there to implement it. You’ve the 3Ds: decide, delegate and disappear. And I think sometimes, the hardest part of that is to disappear. But if you decide and you delegate, there’s no point doing them unless you disappear. You delegate, you have to pass on the responsibility, and the only way you’ll pass that on is to disappear. And if it’s not done right then, well then you’ve to go back to the start again. But if you’ve decided and you’ve delegated, you have to pass out the responsibility, and you have to do it with confidence. That’s what makes everybody grow.”
A really clever person knows what they do not know. And they go about ensuring that they acquire those skillsets or surround themselves with people that possess them. That’s how it has been with the management of people and Cromwell’s leadership.
“I suppose you learn from other people. I learned an awful lot from some of my owners, who are obviously very good in business, and chat to them. They pass on a lot.”
There have been some personnel additions in recent years that have been pivotal in the upward surge.
“Garvan Donnelly is my head lad/assistant trainer. He’s been a game changer for me, heading for three years now. He was head lad with Arthur Moor back in the day when Arthur was champion trainer. He was training himself. Thankfully, he came to work for us. I’ve Troy Cullen helping with the race planning and he’s been brilliant.
“Keith Donoghue has been a huge asset to the yard. Apart from being a brilliant rider, he’s a huge help to me with the day-to-day stuff, with the training and making plans. I don’t think there’s too many would disagree, he’s one of the best in the country. We’re very lucky that he’s with us.”
It is easy to identify now when the first real significant upswing in fortunes occurred. As happens so often, breeder, Gus Bourke only put Jer’s Girl into training because he could not sell her. It was a different ball game after she won a Listed juvenile hurdle in Aintree under Richard Johnson. Bourke was ready to cash in.
On the day she was declared to run in the Grade One Mares’ Novice Hurdle at Fairyhouse at the end of March 2016, JP McManus completed the deal. She got the new association off to the perfect start, nine days after her trainer had gone to Cheltenham to see Don Cossack and Bryan Cooper gallop to glory in the Gold Cup.
Cromwell had resisted the temptation to bring his stable star across the water and was rewarded, pitching the four-year-old in against the older novices to provide him with his maiden Grade One success. They repeated the trick the following month, this time beating the young boys too in cantering to a ten-length triumph in the Champion Novice Hurdle. All Barry Geraghty had to do was steer.
It prompted McManus to reward him with an increased patronage that has continued to this day. The first youngster they sent that summer happened to be Espoir D’Allen. He was the first five-year-old to win the Champion Hurdle in 15 years and his winning margin of 15 lengths was the widest in the history of the race.
The son of Voix Du Nord never ran again, killed after a freak accident coming back from the gallops as he began his build-up to the following season. It was a devastating blow but it was absorbed, even if it still makes Cromwell wince.
Flooring Porter – owned by a four-man syndicate from Galway, though the numbers in the parade ring when he wins suggest there are countless more tethered to his fortunes – went back-to-back in Stayers’ Hurdles in 2020 and 2021 and had the Grand National in his sights after a sensational victory in the Kerry National at Listowel, only for injury to intervene.
These are the vicissitudes of the equine world.
If Jer’s Girl catapulted him to a different plane, her conditioner struggles to identify when he felt that he was a 24-hour trainer.
“It was very gradual. I don’t think there was any one day that I woke up and said, ‘I can actually be a full-time trainer for the rest of me days.’ I started out as a full-time farrier and a part-time trainer, and then I kind of became more a trainer than a farrier but was clinging on to the farrier job for a number of years because I still hadn’t the confidence that this was going to stay working as well as it was, or I was going to grow any better than it was.
“I suppose eventually I just didn’t have the time to do any shoeing. It got to the stage that I couldn’t shoe my own.”
So when his last apprentice had completed his term, Cromwell officially left his profession of more than 20 years to one side. That apprentice is now his farrier.
So maybe that was when he finally made it, though as befitting the prototype of the Irishman absolutely terrified with the notion of anyone thinking they were running away themselves, it is not a term he would ever, EVER use to describe where he stands in the overall firmament.
In a way, the HRI announcement that he would be precluded from running horses in 60 races, along with Mullins, Elliott and Henry de Bromhead was a PR boon, placing him officially among a grouping of the best in the jumping game.
While he has brought about incredible growth, and the quantity of winners has increased exponentially, hitting a career high 72 over jumps in Ireland last season, in terms of prize money and calibre, he is in the same sort of sphere as Joseph O’Brien, who operates a far smaller jumps team, and only edged ahead of the Carriganóg handler into fourth on the trainers’ table for the first time in 2023/24.
Indeed, since Cromwell’s last Grade One on native shores secured by Flooring Porter four years ago, Shark Hanlon, Noel Meade (2), Paddy Corkery, Barry Connell (2), O’Brien, Emmet Mullins, Martin Brassil (3), Jimmy Mangan (2) have scored at the highest level in Ireland.
Given his journey, no one is more aware of the challenges faced by the so-called small man battling for even a tiny piece of the pie. Being penalised for navigating those challenges so well seems bizarre but Cromwell points out that it isn’t really about the trainers..
“The point that everybody is missing is that they’re punishing the owner. I have so many small owners with low-budget horses. I’m here in Goresbridge today and if I come out with a horse, it’s going to be a horse that’s maybe placed in a point to point or placed somewhere. It’s low level stuff. Why are you punishing that man? Or the group of lads that put a syndicate together and I have lots of syndicates.
“I’ve 150 stables because I’ve chosen to keep building these stables, and keep going to these sales, and keep buying the horses and trying to find an owner for them. I’m hungry enough and work hard to do that. I’ll put my hand up at the sales and the bill will be at home before I’ve left. It doesn’t mean I have a yard full of superstars or big owners.
“I have great owners, many in it for the first time. I have a couple of horses you would be hoping might be competitive in a Grade One. That’s it. There’s some really good trainers out there who choose not to have 150 jumpers there and they have access to really big owners and more Grade One horses and fair play to them.”
He believes that providing more opportunities for lower-grade horses, particularly on the high-profile days, where the prize money is better and the RTÉ or TG4 cameras are in town, is the way to help Irish trainers, and particularly racing’s key constituents.
“I feel they need to change stuff with the system to get the horses competitive earlier and to look after the bottom end of it. Have more racing for the lower end. And have an 80-102, or as they’re all in tens from next year, an 80-110 handicap hurdle at a big festival, like they have the 102 hurdle on Thyestes day. Have a low-grade handicap or some type of race for the small man that Willie or Gordon are not going to have horses for. There’s a good chance I would have something in it because I do have them horses, but give the small man a day out on the big day.
“There’s a huge emphasis on the trainer and the last person to get a mention is the owner, if he gets a mention. It’s the Willie Mullins camp, the Gordon Elliott camp and they have lots of different owners. There should be far more emphasis on the owner. The owner is number one.”
It’s a good point, well made.
The truth is, Cromwell just wants to get on with doing what he has always done. Train winners at whatever level is suited to the animals he is responsible for. And while he would like more top-tier horses, he acknowledges that the quality has improved significantly along with the numbers.
“We don’t have too many empty stables anymore. When you’re doing the entries now there’s, there’s not as many to stick into the 80-95s as there used to be, so the quality is getting better. And sure, I think if you were to ask any trainer, it’s not more numbers that you want, it’s better quality. But sometimes you have to go through the numbers to try and find them. And we cater at all levels, and all sorts of budgets.”
Inothewayurthinkin, a facile Kim Muir victor at Cheltenham, who followed up with a convincing triumph in the Grade One Mildmay Novices’ Chase at Aintree, resumed his campaign this term in the John Durkan Chase last month.
Considered by many to be the best chase ever run in Ireland, it was certainly a case of being plunged into the deep end and while well beaten by Fact To File, there were positives.
“He jumped very well. It was the big concern. Last year he was a bit scratchy. When he gained ground on the flat he’d lose it at a jump, just jumping a bit high and slow. Two and a half miles in a properly run Grade One, his jumping held up. He wants further and he got a bit tired but I’d be happy enough.
“He has an entry for (the Savills Chase) at Christmas there, and he’s up to three miles there and at that stage, we’ll know whether we’re good enough (for a tilt at the Gold Cup) or not.”
Only By Night, Sixandahalf and Hello Neighbour are among the younger talents for which various dreams of more exalted targets are alive, though the real tests are still to come. Only By Night is a point winner, a listed bumper winner and has black type over hurdles but as Cromwell suspected, she is a different animal altogether over fences, bolting up in a hot Grade 2 mares’ novice chase at Punchestown earlier this month.
That earned her quotes for the Mares’ Chase at Cheltenham and Cromwell already has the champion in that sphere in Inothewayurthinkin’s full-sister Limerick Lace, while Brides Hill is another with the same aim. Stumptown and former Albert Bartlett victor and Grand National runner-up, Vanillier are two other more established citizens that will have lofty goals as the season reaches its crescendo.
Either way, Gavin Cromwell’s eye will always be on the ball in a sport and industry that operates 365 days a year. Training winners, no matter the standard, is the objective.
So far, so very good.
