DRESSED in his riding gear, Denis Hogan is bidding farewell to new owners who have come to see their recently procured charge, and has had visits from three others during the morning.

After playing host to The Irish Field, the trainer has set the afternoon aside to go shopping for wedding rings with his fiancée Sara Rose, though they have until May 2021 to get that right. Who knows where Boherna Stables will rank by then?

Two years ago, Hogan did the Big Interview having caught the eye with his results in both spheres courtesy of Inis Meain, Jack The Wire and Tithonus. That progress has continued and more people have taken notice.

As we sit in his kitchen on Wednesday, the 32-year-old is already level with his previous best National Hunt tally of 21, while coming off a flat turf campaign that yielded 29 winners, more than double his previous PB of 13 from 2018. Prior to Dundalk last night, he was on 32 for the calendar year.

“To be constantly recruiting horses, constantly recruiting new owners, looking after existing owners, keeping a good team of staff happy; it is a lot of work but thankfully it is paying off,” says Hogan.

“The middle market is a very dangerous market because you could spend €50,000 and have only an ordinary handicap. I still have some of them myself. I would be hoping that some of them would work out and would be there for a new client that might get involved and keep a good horse with us.

“Equally we sold one or two there lately who won point-to-points and we had no owner to keep them here. They were making good money so they had to go. I am delighted to see existing owners of mine making good money out of the sales ring.”

There is a good chance they will reinvest, while in the meantime, buyers who have been lucky with Hogan graduates invariably return for more.

“I hate having a horse overcooked for first time. I love them to come along on the track. Any horse that can do it for us first time or second time out, that is a bonus.

“It is grand bringing on your own horses because I know how much the tank is being dipped and I always know there is more left in them. We are not training to sell, we are training to be here long term. If they sell they sell.

“This is a game you have to work really hard at. We are not expecting someone to come out of the sky and say, ‘Here are the horses, work away.’ We have to find the horses as well as the owners.”

While perhaps buying more in the middle market than he used to, so much of the Hogan success story is founded on buying horses in training cheaply and improving them. Allegio was bought for £5,500 and has won 13 times that. Tithonus cost just €4,200 and made almost €190,000. Inis Meain and Jack The Wire are other examples from earlier on of good returns on astute investment.

Forgive

“You have to be willing to forgive a few things. I would see some people at the sales and they won’t buy this for X reason and that for X reason. If I was to do that I would never buy anything. That is the way we operate. Sometimes we like problems and if we know them we know what we can fix. Be it wind or legs, once we know what we are dealing with we assess if it is value enough to chance.

“Obviously there is horses that don’t work out but when you are working at that end of the market you accept that. It is a lot harder when you spend big and you have no way of improving it.”

Right now, the greatest example of his shrewdness, and that of Colm Sharkey, who does a lot of his buying, is Make A Challenge, whose feats earned the Cloughjordan conditioner the Training Achievement of the Year gong at the Curragh Racing Awards. Acquired for £6,500 at the Goffs UK Autumn Sale in 2017, having failed to make the track as a two-year-old for Godolphin, the son of Invincible Spirit was far from straightforward out of the stalls and even at the start of this term ran loose in Navan before refusing to load at Leopardstown.

The penny eventually dropped with the four-year-old, thanks to the work of Jamie Joyce at home, and he won six times before finishing a close fifth in the Group 1 British Champions Sprint Stakes, less than three lengths behind the victorious Donjuan Triumphant. That brought his earnings to more than €150,000.

“He ran a huge race and he showed us he can compete in that grade which is massive. We never thought he would do what he has done. If he had won a handicap or two it would have been job done.

Buzzing

“I have been putting off and putting off making a plan for him because you are still buzzing off the season we have had. Obviously he will have to mix it in hot company next year. But I am sure he is going to give us some big days. It looks like he could bring us around the world.

“There is a lot of countries he could go to for big prize money. I would imagine he could go to the Prix de l’Abbaye. There’s a lot of sprints from August onwards. It’s exciting. It is crazy. To think I only wanted him to win a handicap and maybe in Galway. That would have been it for me. To think he is 112 rated now. We thought he was harshly treated at 66 at the start!”

Joe Doyle has been a significant player in the Make A Challenge story, a former pony-racing prodigy from over the road in Eglish, who Hogan got to know from their days with neighbour Charlie Swan but had retired after struggling with his weight. From not having a licence in July, Doyle was riding in a Group 1 three months later.

Damien Skehan is an even more recent addition, the well-known amateur pilot having been employed as assistant and even booting home Young Dev for his new boss in an amateur handicap hurdle at Limerick eight days ago.

With Dylan Moran as head lad and Jessica Cahalan as racing secretary, Hogan has key people in important roles that have enabled him to focus on the right areas of the business. Staffing is a problem however and he feels the government needs to make it easier to employ non EU workers.

“I’ve been lucky enough. I’ve always had good staff but it’s very hard to get good staff and keep good staff. You can see trainers advertising every week of the year. I think the government need to do something with permits.

“There’s plenty of work there and if they could help out trainers with the permits for people from outside the EU … I’ve had a lot of applications for jobs from non-EU people but I haven’t been able to take them on because of the cost of getting them papers.”

Another challenge Hogan has had to deal with was the burden of bad debts that threatened his operation. While he understands that it is a legal minefield for HRI, he believes there should be some protection for trainers and other service providers from rogue owners.

“I get on great with HRI. They do a very good job. They’re very proactive in race planning, helping us with syndicates, open days. There’s a few grants available for different things, websites, etc. They are working really hard with trainers.

“I took on an owner. I was warned about him by more than one trainer but I’m young and I suppose I was naïve. I got involved when I seen the horses that were being bought for me. It did suck me in. But I was warned so I’ve no one to blame but myself.

“Everything was going fine. I’d no issue with payment until one or two started to run down the field and that owner decided to move a large number of horses to another trainer.

“I was owed a lot of training fees and that spiralled out to my vets, transport company, the sales companies. There was nothing I could do. He was free to bring a lorry here, move the horses. I kept a few passports and then I got a letter from HRI stating that I had seven days to hand in the passports and it was a criminal offence if I kept them.

“So I actually drove up and handed them in myself because I hadn’t a leg to stand on and just had to take the loss.

“HRI class it as a civil matter. I can see where they’re coming from, it can open a whole legal side that they don’t want to get involved in. This was explained very well at the trainers’ AGM (on Tuesday) by Noel Meade and Mick Halford. It’s not just straightforward, as they would have to prove a lot of things. I get that.

“But in the UK, they can place an owner on a forfeit list meaning he can’t move from one trainer to another without paying the last bill. HRI are allowed stop an owner making an entry when they’re owed money.

“I suppose something in place would be good for young trainers starting off especially … that are hungry, will take a chance, will do anything to get going. Like myself. Winners were all I could see and there were nice horses being flashed in front of me. It was very hard to turn down.

Hit hard

“I’ve been lucky. It hit me hard but I was able to handle it. But I’m not sure, if I was a little bit smaller, it could have put me fully under. When I saw that HRI were able to stop Supreme Racing from having runners because of the dispute there, but I had to hand over the passports when I was owed a large amount of money, that was a little surprising. Look, I’ll learn from it. I was warned and I didn’t listen. It was an expensive lesson.”

He is a long time gone from Halford’s, to whom he was apprenticed in the early days, but still recalls the trainer’s advice about using his time wisely, learning to delegate tasks and being better off chasing owners than mucking out a stable.

There are a lot of syndicates in the yard, while James McAuley and Jim Gough have been a significant presence since linking up in August 2018, after the former handed in his own licence to train.

Working a disciplined business model, they have been regulars in claiming races and Hogan is a big fan, believing that there should be many more in the National Hunt scene as well.

“Five or 10 years ago it was nearly an offence to claim a horse off another trainer or you definitely didn’t do it without permission. But the game has changed a lot. I would be a big fan of them and I would hope we will have more of them over jumps.

“There has only been one jump race and we claimed Solar Heat out of it for €4,000 and she has since gone on and been placed twice and won seven or eight grand for a syndicate put together by Darragh Hayes of Platinum Racing, who’s a good friend of mine.

New owners

“Everyone is a winner. New owners get into the game. They can buy a horse ready to go. They can see what they are buying. It is just after performing. With new horses there are new dreams and they don’t have to spend all this money on training a store that their chances are in the lap of the gods.

“It is generally cost-effective. HRI are a winner too because they get 5% commission on all these claims. I can’t see why there wouldn’t be more of them.

“Yuften has been the big talking point from them. He has had seven trainers now including me twice. But this year alone he has won for Johnny Feane, Adrian McGuinness, myself, Noel Kelly and now I have him back again.

“He’s a typical horse for claimers, rated about 89-90 all the time and is probably not well enough treated in handicaps but can dictate in a claiming race.

“The risk is somebody else wants him. But I think it’s great for them type of horses that have a long way to go to come down the handicap.

“They get fed up with the game, finishing down the field, getting a hard race all the time with the weight and mentally they give up so with claiming races, they still have the chance to be competitive.”

Halford has also told him to pack in riding. It is evident that he fancies landing a couple of big pots in the saddle and feels he might have the artillery to do so but the end is nigh.

“I’ve slowed down. I really enjoy it. I love schooling, particularly young horses. I love when they’re schooled right and they learn their job from scratch. I enjoy that though we’re probably having a bit more success on the flat as a trainer.

“I love the jumping side of it and I love riding. I didn’t think I’d be able to do it over 30 horses and now we’re at nearly 100.

“I’m not going to be riding that much but I’ll do it for another little while anyway. There’s still one or two I want to ride so we’ll see how it goes for season!”

Moyhenna is certainly one of those, having been sent to him by Robert Hennelly after Hogan had done well with her younger half-sister Moskovite.

“She got to 142 novice chasing last year. She won a Grade 2 and a Grade 3 for us. She’s gonna have her comeback over hurdles in Navan (today), in the Grade B handicap hurdle. It’s worth a few quid and I’m looking forward to it. I’d be hopeful of a big run. She holds an entry in the Paddy Power at Christmas so hopefully this will be a stepping stone if she runs a nice race.”

While Moyhenna is a true winter National Hunt horse, that places her in a minority at Boherna, given that Hogan specialises in dual-purpose operators in need of nicer ground. That the big guns are not as active is an attraction too. They are also why he tends to focus on horses in training rather than novices in either code.

“I find that bracket is very hard to crack. Would you fancy taking on Envoi Allen or Abacadabras? The two-year-old job and the novice hurdle job, it’s where I’d love to be but unfortunately we don’t get sent that kind of ammunition.

“But we’re working towards it. That’s where we want to be. I’m sure Willie Mullins or any of the other big trainers didn’t get there overnight either.”

He’s going the right way.