- Bill O’Gorman wrote a lovely book “Racing horses-About my father’s business”. It details the training of racehorses, 2 year olds specifically and makes for great reading. It’s freely available and worth a look. I haven’t read it in years but I think of it often.
- I always wanted to train, I don’t know why but it’s something that consumed me ever. I say ever but as soon as I realised riding wasn’t going to be my thing. I burned through my teenage years and early twenties with a desire to ride. I rode OK, looked the part (to an extent) but was like a clown out of a cannon when a fence was involved. Just couldn’t get the hang of it. My advisors (parents) wanted me to train at something hence the dentistry and inevitably that sidetracked me for a period. Lucky it did, I wouldn’t have had the temperament for this business in my early 30s but I finally positioned myself to get going in 2017.
- I had the good fortune to cross paths with David O Meara before starting. Having observed his methods I knew what way I wanted to go about it. Keep it simple, find a routine that worked and run them. We did that, kept doing it and it worked and broadly speaking kept working. We had very simple horses starting out. Well handicapped horses without problems that won and got us well handicapped horses that tended to win. They were heady days, chaotic workloads, hand to mouth stuff and despite all the ambition in the world I daren’t believe that this could be a legitimate business. It’s not really but despite a worldwide pandemic and an impending global recession it sometimes feels as if it might be.
- Training is massively different to how it’s perceived in my opinion. This is just my experience and someone with far greater success than I may disagree. It’s perceived as an art form. A notion perpetuated in the media. You picture Aidan figuratively conducting his orchestra of horses. These guy’s genius (if that’s the word) is their ability to keep finding a way forward. Find a routine that pulls the best out of the majority and keep going forward. Start with the best of everything, the best of animal husbandry, that means the best of care and that means people. Have the best bedding, hay(lage), feed, equipment, gallop surface, farrier, dentist and you’re a long way somewhere. That’s a must, we don’t have the horses to take on the big outfits. Anyone can match them with the basics.
- My experience of national hunt horses is limited but with flat horses speed is king. It’s the most natural thing in the world. They’ve evolved to graze and sprint, graze and sprint and they appear to love it. If there’s one thing that has sparked life into the Alan’s Pride’s, Tom Dooley’s or Math’s Prize’s of my life it’s a couple of swinging canters. Those boys and Beach Bar(to a chaotic extent) would step along over 4 furlongs twice everyday to their heart’s content. When they were operating nothing would knock them off course. When they weren’t, nothing would get them back on track other than the passage of time.
- You run into difficulties when it becomes forced. Higher end 2 year olds just let their work come to them, they jump off, relax and build away naturally. The lesser ones or those developing problems start looking for ways to rush through it. Speed is fine and works as part of a daily routine for young and old, sprinters and stayers. It just needs to develop naturally. This isn’t original, it’s the Yorkshire way. Facilities vary but a Yorkshire canter is not a canter.
- It seems too simple but when it’s happening and I mean really happening that’s the way it goes. A piece of work is a truncated version of a race, a nice stretch in company over 6 or 7 furlongs and you’re good to go. Place them and they’ll do something, they may need it or need trip, ground or tactics looked at but what about it. On to the next day.
- Problem horses abound and there are endless experts to tell you how to sort them. My experience is little works. We have injected joints, sent horses for wind surgeries, fed supplements and probiotics. A horse that is going to do something finds a way. Cater for all the standard things, find a nice natural rhythm and wait. They come or they don’t. It’s extraordinary to see.
- We have had our troughs and I write this not from a point of expertise but merely as a point of interest. It’s easy to get mired in bad horses and then you lose track of what’s good and bad. It becomes forced and just like the horses you lose your way. Been there, bought the tee shirt. We haven’t set the world alight before or since but we tick along and as long as you have horses you have a chance.
- I’m fascinated by a nice horse and we have had some but the emphasis is on finding a real one. Horses can do extraordinary things at their level but to find one that doesn’t make mistakes, quickens and quickens, a real jet would be the dream.
This business
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