MICK Winters, the ever-popular Kanturk, Co Cork, trainer, is a man full of surprises – you never know what he’s going to do next – but his race record speaks for itself and shows that he has to be taken seriously when it comes to the training of his horses.
He goes to great lengths to keep his small string happy in their work and his occasionally unorthodox methods have yielded big race success in the Galway Hurdle twice with Rebel Fitz and Missunited and an equally memorable win for Missunited in the Group 3 Lillie Langtry Stakes at Goodwood.
At Cheltenham the spotlight will fall on his current stable stars Chatham Street Lad and the Trevor Hemmings-owned Sayce Gold who takes her chance in the Albert Bartlett Hurdle.
Chatham Street Lad, who is owned by Castlebar hoteliers Vivian Healy and his brother Liam, and was bought by Winters at the 2015 Goffs Land Rover Sale, is already a course winner thanks to his runaway victory under Mallow native Darragh O’Keeffe in the Caspian Caviar Gold Cup in December and was due to take on the big guns in the Betway Queen Mother Champion Chase or, alternatively the Ryanair Chase.
However, his performance in the two-mile, one-furlong Dan & Joan Moore Memorial Handicap Chase at Fairyhouse in January, where he finished a 12-length third to Daly Tiger and Pont Aven, changed Winters’ mind.
He commented the following day: “The mood in the camp is still good but maybe our tactics were wrong. In most of his races, he was never over-involved but his jockey was just following instructions and I was happy with him that he galloped away and held on to third place.
“You have to give credit to the first and second but the race was like a rocking chair and he never got into a rhythm from one fence to the next and was never able to relax.
“I’ve always had it in my mind that he’s 10 lengths better going left-handed and we’ll give him a bit of a break now, freshen him down and go for one of the handicaps but I won’t run him on good ground. The horse is treated like a God now and you couldn’t say boo to him!”
FAITH
Chatham Street Lad had already done three schooling sessions under Simon Torrens who partnered him at Fairyhouse and the effervescent trainer has complete faith in the 5lb claimer should O’Keeffe, who was suspended for a day on that occasion, not be available for any reason.
He said of Chatham Street Lad’s recent trip to the Curragh: “I just thought the horse needed a day away to freshen him up.
“Simon was doing the schooling on him before he ran in Ballinrobe and they seemed to get on well together. It’s great for a young fellah to get a twist when they’re good enough to do the job and get a chance.”
The Beneficial gelding, who was picked out by the trainer’s good friend Jimmy Gordon, was a novice over fences when he travelled to Cheltenham for the first time to become the first Irish-trained winner of the December race since 2005.
Both the horse and his impulsive trainer lit up Cheltenham that day with their respective performances on the hallowed turf.
Chatham Street Lad, with O’Keeffe whose grandfather Johnny rode as an amateur just after the Connie Vaughan and Bill McLernon era in the saddle, was scintillating while Winters proved he was a man of his word by getting down on his hands and knees in the parade ring afterwards to roll in the Cheltenham mud.
He’d said in the build-up to the race that if the horse won, he’d roll like a pig in the muck to show his appreciation and duly obliged live on television, cheered on by his owners and their supporters, much to the amusement of presenter Alice Plunkett!
The trainer reflected: “It was kind of embarrassing. I was looking up into the skies with my arms outstretched like Davy Russell but people wouldn’t understand you’d be acting the cob!
“I got a text afterwards from someone saying it reminded him of a sow getting ready to farrow but it was something different and kind of nice. The beauty of it is a local jockey won.”
SPONTANEITY
But the real beauty of the moment was Mick’s spontaneity and his total lack of inhibition. It means life in the Winters’ household is never dull for his wife Tricia, a media studies graduate, who came up with the logo that emblazons his horsebox: ‘Winters racing for all seasons.’
She is the first one up in the morning to give the horses their early morning feed at 6.30am, while Mick languishes in bed until she gives the “staff” their morning cup of tea an hour later!
However, there was no VIP treatment for the trainer on his return from Cheltenham after Chatham Street Lad’s Caspian Caviar Gold Cup success.
He remembers: “We arrived back with the trophy on the Sunday morning after travelling overnight and they were all busy around the yard because they were going point-to-pointing. I thought I’d be able to fall straight into bed but they gave me a brush and got me to do a small bit of work, so I came down to earth very quickly!”
For Winters the win also earned him a place in local history as he was following in the footsteps of Connie Vaughan who rode the winner of the four-mile National Hunt Chase and the O’Sullivan family’s Foxhunters winners Lovely Citizen and It Came To Pass by having a Cheltenham winner to his name. A Festival success on top of that would be just the ticket.
A first Festival fright
WINTERS still has cause to remember his first trip to Cheltenham with Phelans Fancy around 15 years ago. It goes without saying that the finer points of the journey were rather unorthodox, centering as they did around two hunters that aspiring amateur Jeremiah Dologhery, who rode his first point-to-point winner “by default” in a novice riders’ race at Kildorrery, had sold to Cheltenham official Simon Claisse and his brother, two keen hunting enthusiasts, over the phone.
Mick takes up the story. He said: “Jeremiah just needed to get them there and we came up with the answer to his problem. Phelans Fancy, a good honest mare, was after winning her point-to-point and had run in a couple of hurdle races when the owners and myself decided it would be a good idea to enter her for the Foxhunters.
“Jeremiah had the two hunters in beside her in the lorry and we arrived in Cheltenham. There was mesh all around the racecourse and when we let the ramp down, didn’t the two hunters get loose and run away!
“We had our mare inside the lorry and thought she wouldn’t be let out of it but we got her into her stable and she ran in the Foxhunters and Mikey O’Connor rode her.
“That was in the old days when people used to come over with their chest stuck out and the badges.
FRESH KID
“Our next journey to Cheltenham, where Adrian Maguire was the fresh kid on the block, was not as intimidating.”
Maguire, of course, is married to Sabrina Winters, a sister of Mick’s, and the latter well remembers the night he had to put Maguire to bed on the second night of the Cheltenham Festival. He explained: “Adrian was riding a horse called Capability Brown for Martin Pipe in a novice chase on the first day and they were running down to the fence down the hill at a thousand miles an hour.
“We said ‘If this fellow tips it, he’s gone’ and he somersaulted over it, giving Adrian a very bad fall. The late Ferdy Murphy put us up in lodgings that he had booked for the night and we went back there after the doctor had checked Adrian out and given him some painkillers and he went off to bed himself.
“We were all astonished when he got up the next morning and said he was riding in Cheltenham. Adrian rode a double that day – youth got him over the line, he was dynamite – and we celebrated with a Chinese that evening and a few glasses of wine.
“Between the pain killers and his glass or two of wine kicking in, he went out like a light so I picked my little ‘maneen’ up, put him over my shoulder and carried him up to bed!”
Champagne knockout
ANOTHER Cheltenham memory that sticks in the trainer’s mind concerns the amount of alcohol being consumed in the morning before racing or the price of it, to be more exact!
Winters recalls: “The jockeys had to be there at 10 o’clock in the morning and there were people there just standing around, drinking champagne. I’m more cultured now but, after a while, I felt a bit guilty and thought I’d get a round in.
“It was £40 sterling for a bottle and I think I had to get someone to bail me out – it was a very humbling experience!”