‘Long term, I’d love to train a Cheltenham winner, as I feel my entire career stemmed from Total Enjoyment winning at the Festival… That Cheltenham Bumper at the 2004 Festival is one of my earliest memories of racing. My father, Alan, was part of the syndicate that owned that mare and my uncle, Noel, bred her. There were great celebrations.’

Cian Collins, speaking after training his first winner in The Irish Field’s Heart of Racing column, September 2022

AS he stood amongst the magic and madcappery that comes with celebrations in Cheltenham’s hallowed winner’s enclosure, all Cian Collins could do was draw a deep breath and try to digest what had just unfolded before his eyes.

Anyone who came through the gates of Prestbury Park last Wednesday would have gone home feeling they witnessed an afternoon that was something a bit special. For Collins, he went home having conquered a lifelong ambition.

Jazzy Matty’s Grand Annual heroics spelled lift-off for his 27-year-old trainer at the Cheltenham Festival - his only runner at the meeting proving just the ticket to get him off the mark. Who ever said good horses couldn’t come out of the Caldwell Dispersal Sale? This was impressive shooting, by anyone’s standards.

It’s a week removed from that landmark triumph when we meet on a bright March morning at his ever-evolving Robinstown, Co Meath base. While the Tralee native is already well on his way with plans for future spring festival raids, it’s clear that the stunning 40 minutes in which Michael O’Sullivan’s two Cheltenham stars entered Festival folklore won’t ever be forgotten around here.

“It was all a blur once he won,” Collins reflects, while ambling down from the deep-sand, round gallop to his 70 stables.

“Cheltenham has always felt like the be-all and end-all for me, Total Enjoyment is really how I got into racing, but it didn’t hit me straight away afterwards. It was just a feeling of relief. A lot of relief. I took a deep breath and that was it.

“It’s not that I felt that much pressure, but any winner brings relief - no matter where it comes. Especially at Cheltenham, though. And when we really fancied him, as we did going there. Part of the relief is that he’s not a flashy work horse, but he delivered on the day. You’d nearly be scratching your head with him sometimes!

“The amount of messages that have been coming in from all over the place ever since has been incredible… I still haven’t even gotten through them all. I think we must have watched back the replay 100 times since coming home. We watch it every evening that we sit down after coming in from the yard - we’ve even had it up while sitting on the tractor! It’s given us a great kick.”

Major turnaround

There were some astronomical sums forked out for horses from Andy and Gemma Brown’s National Hunt sale last year, but Jazzy Matty - a bang-out-of-form five-year-old, who was struggling since his Fred Winter win - fetched only €50,000.

That even looked bad value at the time, according to some of the best form judges around. As Johnny Dineen summed up on this week’s Upping The Ante show: “I remember people were on about the prices horses made when horses sold for 600 grand and upwards, but I thought the worst horse sold at that sale was Jazzy Matty. It thought he must have had one leg left if they were letting him go for 50 grand.”

Collins, who signed the docket for him, alongside trusted ally Denis O’Regan, admits to having concerns of his own after an early appearance for the yard.

“We were delighted to get him coming out of the sale, even if he was a bit of a gamble, but when he more or less pulled up at Killarney on his first start for us, we were really scratching our heads,” he says.

“I think I said to Denis at the time, ‘Jesus, we might have to end up going to somewhere like Les Landes in Jersey to win a race with this fella!’ If we had to go there for a winner, we would have. Jordan Gainford did a lot of work with him and deserves plenty of credit. Chasing got his confidence back. I’d say he’d fallen out of love with things a little bit, we freshened him and switching to fences lit him up.”

Collins’ partner Correna Bowe, an important part of the operation between the yard and office, is also credited with playing a hand in the revival.

“Correna rides out Jazzy every day and has done a serious job with him,” says the trainer, looking out onto the Festival winner’s outdoor living arrangement.

“She’s effectively babysitted him for the last couple of months and has given him so much TLC. I think he’s really enjoyed that and the change of scenery. It’s funny the way they turn a corner.

“He seems to just come alive over at Cheltenham too; it was the same when he went there for the October meeting. You could bring him to Wexford or Sligo, where he won, and he just walks around the parade ring. He prances around Cheltenham. He’s very laid-back, nothing flashy, but rises to the occasion when you need him.”

While he has been preparing horses in his own style since taking out his licence in the summer of 2022, Collins is a graduate of the Gordon Elliott school of training that has housed several talented handlers under its roof in years gone by. Like Collins, Olly Murphy, Ian Donoghue, and even Gavin Cromwell as a farrier, have each cut their teeth in one guise or another at Cullentra before focusing on individual training ventures.

Early grounding

Another of the early moments that propelled Jazzy Matty’s trainer on his current path also came during Cheltenham week. This time in 2014, while working at Tom Cooper’s yard. With Tom required to fly to England on the day that his son Bryan suffered serious leg injuries in a fall, Collins was essentially left in charge of the yard at the age of 15.

“I didn’t know it would be the case, but I never went back to school after that week,” he says. “I was well used to the yard at that stage and had wanted to get out of school long enough.”

Spells with Ger Lyons, Dessie and Sandra Hughes followed for the former pony-racer before making his way to Elliott, who supplied the majority of his winners as a jockey.

His riding career was cut short early, however, in a fall at Limerick in April 2017. The damage of a broken T3, T4 and T5 saw him need two metal rods and 11 screws inserted into his back. Today, he appreciates just how lucky he is to have his current way of life.

“Being a jockey was my main focus at the time, it wasn’t training,” he says.

“Being forced to quit didn’t upset me too bad; I’m probably lucky to be able to walk, to be honest. It was the same metal in my back that Robbie McNamara and other lads had; I was just lucky my spinal cord wasn’t damaged. In the same ward, everyone else was wheeling up and down in chairs, so I knew I was lucky just to be able to walk out of there. It definitely gives you perspective on everything.”

Collins admits he isn’t the easiest to deal with in the aftermath of defeat on the racecourse, but he has found further big-picture understanding in a separate family medical incident that transpired only last autumn.

“When Impero won for us at Cheltenham in October and Jazzy Matty finished second, my sister, Tara, was very ill at the time,” he explains.

“She got a brain haemorrhage when she was only 23. She was in hospital in a coma. Thankfully, she’s made a full recovery, but something like that makes the losing a lot easier to take, to see the big picture.

“Now, I’m still not a good loser, I don’t take it well, but I’m getting better. I know it can’t happen all the time, but I just want to win. We’re always trying to improve, constantly looking back at what we might have done differently, pushing to do better. What happened with my sister put a lot of things into perspective, though.”

He adds: “As it turns out with Jazzy Matty being beaten that day in October, if we had won then, he’d have gotten a good hike and mightn’t have won last week. Long-term, it was all worth it.”

Finding opportunities

It’s possible that Collins could have Punchestown Festival representatives next month, such as Mighty Tom, Brandt, Sporting Glance, Affinity Rock, Has Me Dreaming, Fiveonefive, Crossing The Bar and Impero (owned by the track’s stalwart Dick O’Sullivan) joining Jazzy Matty. That said, he has very much adopted the Elliott motto of travelling wherever is necessary to get winners on the board in any grade.

“Going to England has been a big Gordon thing - I think we’ve had 10 or 11 winners out of travelling over there,” he explains.

“There’s more red-tape nowadays than before, and sometimes it’s a last-minute rush, but I still think it’s worth it for a winner. We’re lucky that Belfast is only an hour and a half away and you’d be in Dublin in 40 minutes - that’s a big help for the ferries.

“What’s funny about it too is that people actually notice you going to some of those lower-key tracks in England. You could have a runner at Sligo and nobody would be in touch, yet you have one at Catterick and everyone is on!

“Gordon lets me use his gallop any time I want and would always say well done after a winner. I spent a long time with him and learned plenty. You try to do your own thing as a trainer, but obviously keep in mind a lot of the things he would have done.”

At a time when several trainers have handed in their licences and are finding the game more challenging than ever, Collins is only doubling down on his desire to enter higher echelons. It’s apparent there’s a clear hunger here for more success, more horses, better horses - and an urgency about getting there.

“I just want to get bigger. I’ve never turned away a horse because you never know where one horse can take you, but I really want to step up the quality of what we have. I’m learning that I won’t be running as many of the weaker ones going forward, but I’d love to get that better quality of horse. We have 55 to 60, and have room for more. We try to get the best out of every horse, train them all differently. It’s all about winners, isn’t it?

“Mick Winters actually came up to me the other day at Wexford and gave me a bit of advice. He said ‘you have one good horse now, don’t get comfortable with him - make sure to find the next one’. He said when they had Rebel Fitz, they were so thrilled to have the one, but you need to constantly try to kick on and find another flagbearer. We went to Cheltenham with one this year, but I’d love to be going over with the lorry full. Hopefully, in time, that will come.”

One dream realised last week might just be the springboard to another. The ambition is certainly there.

Collins on…

His Robinstown operation

“We really have a mighty team behind us. Ray Loftus does all the driving and got in touch on his way home from Cheltenham to say that it was the best day of his life. It’s nice to hear that everyone is enjoying it on the ground too. Mark Foley, who was also with Gordon before, has been a great addition. Davy [Condon] and Denis obviously have a lot of experience and have been very helpful to us, especially with work. Correna is like our medical person around the yard and takes a lot of the pressure off me with all the office work. Connor Bowman, Jack Lord and everyone are important around the place too. We’re really very lucky with the team we have.

“We’ve got some very good jockeys riding for us. I try to spread the rides as best I can between the likes of Danny Gilligan, Jordan Gainford, Carl Millar, Ben Harvey, Eoin Walsh and Tiernan Power Roche. We have a mixture of owners: plenty of syndicates, a few horses of my own and some fantastic supporters in the yard. Kevin McConnell and Pat Daly have been a great support to me, and my dad is involved in a couple of horses, while also helping with getting syndicates together. Without the backing that all our owners have given us, we wouldn’t be able to do it.”

Plans for Jazzy Matty

“He came out of Cheltenham well. We actually uploaded a video of him online after coming home, bucking and running around the place, and it seemed to go viral. I’d be thinking of holding out for the Galway Plate with him, and he mightn’t run again over fences before then. He’s rated 125 over hurdles [compared to 142 over fences], so he could go over hurdles at the Punchestown Festival next. There’s a nice two-mile option for him there, but he’d be fine over further too. Hopefully he’s still improving.”

Effernock Fizz

“That Welsh Champion Hurdle was probably the best kick I ever got out of a winner. She’s been an unbelievable mare. I can’t get my head around what she did when winning at Fairyhouse last season [in the €100,000 Rybo Handicap Hurdle]. I still watch it from time to time and just can’t make sense of it - it was crazy. She just has a huge heart. She’s been covered and I’m hoping it might spark her up a bit. This will be her final season but I’ve been very lucky to have her - she’s won four for us. Only for her, it would have been a longer road at the start.”

Winning with second-hand horses

“An example would be Brandt, who came to us from England rated 90, without having won a race, and he’s got two on the board for us now. He’s rated 118 today. I get a great kick out of that. I think we’ve got five from Gordon and four have won. Effernock Fizz and Impero came from other places too. I think they probably get into a routine and are happy here. I wouldn’t over-gallop them; I hate to over-do it and would much rather go there fresh.”