SINCE he first started training two-year-olds, Gavin Cromwell’s simple training technique through the early stages has stayed the same – send them away as a group to work together and that gives him a good idea of what’s what.

This year was no different and as he stood and watched the class of 2021 work together for the first time, he saw two fillies breaking clear of the rest. The pair were Quick Suzy and Sunset Shiraz, and though he wasn’t sure of it at the time, right there and then Cromwell saw his 2021 flat season emerge before his eyes.

“It’s funny the way things work out sometimes,” the Meath trainer reflects. “We had an idea from then that they were going to be okay but I didn’t expect either of them to get to where they are now. It just goes to show you that sometimes you know from the get-go with them.”

The two fillies have been central to another fairly remarkable chapter in the Gavin Cromwell story. This interview could focus solely on the upcoming jumps season proper. We could talk all day about the likes of Flooring Porter, Vanillier and Letsbeclearaboutit, who are three of main protagonists among a team of 60 horses Cromwell has to go to war with this winter. But as the ground softens and the light fades earlier each evening, the current main source of excitement in Cromwell’s yard just outside Navan is for Quick Suzy’s impending trip to California for the Breeders’ Cup.

She goes for the Juvenile Turf Sprint after earning that right with a superb performance in the Queen Mary at Royal Ascot, stamping her trainer’s ticket into a unique club of trainers to have sent out winners at Royal Ascot and the Cheltenham Festival.

A Profitable filly, bought at just €20,000 by Aoife Dunphy for her family at the Goffs Autumn Online Sale last November, Cromwell always liked Quick Suzy when she arrived to his yard outside Navan.

He picks up the story: “The Dunphy family have had horses with me in the past and Ian McCarhty pre-trained her and he said he liked her. I thought she was forward and she was going to be coming out early alright. I thought she was definitely up to winning a maiden of some sort and beyond that it was very hard to tell. But we liked her.

“She won her maiden very well and then finished second in a Group 3 at Naas, and that’s when her current American owners, Eclipse Thoroughbreds bought her. With that connection, even then there was talk of the Breeders’ Cup.

“But it was a dream to be going to Royal Ascot. I’d never been to Ascot before. I’d been threatening to go for the last few years and between one thing or the other it didn’t happen. “Then, after talking of going but not going for so many years, I decided we’re not going to go unless we have a runner. To then go with our first runner and win, it was brilliant, absolutely fantastic.”

Unique

As mentioned, the Royal Ascot-Cheltenham Festival club is a unique one. It is an outstanding achievement to get into it as it’s difficult to decipher which meeting is easier to win at. The competition at Cheltenham is red hot taking on Mullins, Elliott, De Bromhead, Nicholls, Henderson, et al, but Royal Ascot is a fully international meeting these days. In the juvenile races, you don’t just have to beat the best of the British early juveniles, but a few choice American speedsters as well.

Push Cromwell for a choice on which meeting was more satisfying to have trained a winner and he bats it away gently, the pictures on his wall at home give him equal satisfaction and he’s not one to go bragging about what he has achieved.

That is Cromwell for you. Though there is training in his blood - his uncle Gerry, who sadly passed away this week, trained horses for years - Gavin himself is a trainer by happenstance, not by long-term design and his facilities at home reflect that. As his star has risen, his yard has had to expand to keep up – more stables, more staff, more facilities. Build as you go.

He’s a quiet man in front of the camera, not one to overly sell himself, so the logical conclusion is that it’s his pure talent along with a good team that has seen him relentlessly progress to become a player at the top races of both codes.

The backing of J.P. McManus a few years back may well have been key. When Cromwell was last featured in The Big Interview in February 2019, all the talk was of his gradual progress through the ranks and the two McManus horses that helped him along the way – Jer’s Girl, the mare that put him on the map, and Espoir D’Allen, who was going for the Champion Hurdle.

Of course Espoir D’Allen romped home in the Champion Hurdle in a race that was supposed to be dominated by two top-class mares from the yards of Gordon Elliott and Willie Mullins. That horse sadly had a fatal accident the following season but he played his role as a catalyst for his trainer who sent out 62 winners that term, enough to put him fifth in the trainers’ championship.

Another half century in Ireland last season consolidated his progress but more significantly, he trained two more Grade 1 winners at Cheltenham, Vanillier in the Albert Bartlett and Flooring Porter in the Stayers’ Hurdle, that latter mentioned success means he’s catching up on Willie Mullins to securing a Festival feature race slam, now halfway there. Could those successes be the catalyst for another jolt forward?

“I suppose we’ve always tried to keep driving it forward by getting new horses and new owners,” Cromwell replies when asked about how he’s gone about progressing his yard. “We built more stables and thankfully kept filling them. I’ve had great support from owners and sure without them, we wouldn’t be where we are.

“We probably had about 20 or so on the flat this summer. There were a few dual-purpose horses in as well. We bought a few yearlings over the last month and some of our owners have bought a few themselves. Hopefully next year we’ll have 14 or 15 two-year-olds, please god.

“We’ve 60 to run for the winter and a few nice young horses coming along behind them. I don’t know how big we could get, I don’t know the answer to that really. We’ll keep doing what we’re doing at the moment and I wouldn’t like to write anything in stone.

“We would always like to improve the quality of the horse we have, like everybody else. Sometimes you need to go through the numbers to find the quality. You never really know with horses, you never know what you could end up with. Flooring Porter was a €5,000 store and Jer’s Girl was unsold at something like €7,000 at a sale. They all warrant a go and we’re more than willing to give them a chance.”

Policy

That’s always been the Cromwell policy. Widen the net to as far as it will go and see what comes back and then work with it.

The season before last was the season of Darver Star, the horse who started the season at its earliest stage as a 104-rated handicapper and finished his year out with a third in the Champion Hurdle.

Maybe he was just one of those horses that come along every once a generation, hard to explain. But what for Flooring Porter, who was rated 95 when he won his Bellewstown maiden hurdle and ended up a dual Grade 1 winner last season. Can that be coincidence? But, again, Cromwell isn’t about to start blowing his own trumpet.

“The owners of both those horses are syndicate-owned. They got such a buzz out of it. It’s great to see ordinary people owning a good horse and being able to celebrate a big day. It’s fantastic for everybody. It’s great for the whole yard and it’s a great boost for everybody.

“I could never have foreseen what Flooring Porter did last season. He started off as a modest low grade handicapper and he just kept improving and improving. It just goes to show you, you never know with horses, what level they can get to.

“He’s in great form now and we’re happy with him. We’ll probably start him off in the Boyne Hurdle at Navan next month with a view to going to Leopardstown at Christmas and onto Cheltenham after.”

And what for Vanillier, the runaway winner of the Albert Bartlett?

“I’m really looking forward to him going chasing,” Cromwell asserts. “He won a point to point for Sam Curling before I bought him. We schooled him at home for a few days and he jumped great. He’ll probably go to Down Royal and we’re really looking forward to it.

“He won very well at Cheltenham and that actually surprised me. It was brilliant and while we’re hopeful of getting back there with him, it’s not all about Cheltenham with him either. There’s some great winter racing to look forward to.”

Challenges

With an ever-expanding yard of horses comes more challenges day to day. Indeed just three weeks ago, Cromwell lost a key member of his team, racing manager Feidhlim Cunningham, a previous odds compiler with Paddy Power who brought an edge to the yard’s placing of horses and selecting horses to buy at the sales.

Cromwell says he’ll have to work harder himself now, starting at the Tattersalls Autumn Horses-in-Training Sale next week, for which he has been scouring through the catalogues in the hope of unearthing more horses to improve and prosper with. He also has someone coming in to part-fill the race planner role. In the meantime, like so many yards in this country, Cromwell points to staffing as a more consistent and troublesome problem.

“It’s a huge challenge,” he says. “I don’t know what the answer is but the staff just don’t seem to be in the country, we don’t seem to have the riders or the ground staff either. I really think the government has to step in and do something because horse prices are going through the roof and the market is very strong but we need the people on the ground to keep it going.

“I think they’re going to have to open up the visas for people abroad who are more than willing to come here if they could. They can ride and they have experience and the work is here for them. It’s a massive problem in Ireland at the moment.”

Cromwell took this call on his way back from Gowran Park on Tuesday when he sent out flat winners number 14 and 15 for the season. One of those was Sunset Shiraz who gained a well-deserved win comfortably. She has been as good as Quick Suzy this year, placing in the Group 1 Moyglare Stud Stakes, and wouldn’t be out of her depth in Del Mar either, but the plan is to go for a 1000 Guineas trial next spring.

Now, it’s all about Suzy.

“After Ascot, we went to France with her for the Prix Morny,” Cromwell explains. “I suppose we felt a small bit of pressure then, considering what she had achieved already. The ground went against her a little bit on the day and it just didn’t work out (finished ninth).

“I wasn’t terribly disappointed though. She led them down to the furlong pole and it just didn’t work out from there. Since she was bought by her current owners, it was always the intention to end up at the Breeders’ Cup, that was always the ultimate goal so we really have trained her with that fully in mind.

“It’s a huge occasion and a huge ask. The draw is very significant and we won’t know that until much closer to the time. She’s never raced around a bend either which is a bit of an unknown but she is going to have a gallop around Dundalk towards the weekend. Gary Carroll will go over to ride her again and we’re happy with her anyway.”

Ten years ago Gavin Cromwell was best known as Gordon Elliott’s farrier. It is to his immense credit that he has become one of the best trainers in Ireland and now has a runner at one of the biggest meetings in world racing.

Given what he has achieved already, you couldn’t write him off from taking yet another opportunity he has carved out for himself. And given the way his career has developed so far, there will be plenty more of them to come.