THERE is a wall in the office of Glenburnie Stables and it contains a picture of every winner Ger Lyons’ team sends out in the calendar year.

At the end of each year, the pictures come down, leaving a blank canvas to start again, a new total to beat.

“What started it off was just me looking at the Healys and how hard they work, driving day in, day out from Listowel for racing,” Lyons explains.

“Winners are very important, so every time we have a winner, we buy a Healy photo. It’s a thank you to them.

“Then what do you do with the picture? You put it on the wall and then that’s your number one winner, your number two, number three and so forth. It became a barometer, a goal-setter type of thing.

“If you’re looking at an empty wall, you’re not having a great season. It keeps your mind on the job, keeps us all focused.”

The wall is a relatively new concept but Lyons will tell you himself a small mantelpiece would have sufficed when he first started off, 25 years ago now. It has been gradual but serious progress has been made. The name ‘G M Lyons’ first appeared in the top five of the Irish flat trainers’ championship in 2013 and it has stayed inside that threshold since.

There were 71 pictures on the wall last year. Joint top contributor to the total was Siskin, who returned four wins from four runs. More than that, he delivered his trainer an elusive first Group 1 on home soil. Siskin most likely has a place for life on another wall at Glenburnie. But there is so much more to play for.

Lyons, stable jockey Colin Keane and Siskin \Healy Racing

Guineas

The Khalid Abdullah-owned son of First Defence returns to the scene of his Phoenix Stakes win for the belated running of the Irish 2000 Guineas and bids to give his ever ambitious trainer a maiden classic win next Saturday. Despite stamina doubts, Siskin is favourite to win at the Curragh, not that his trainer pays any attention to that or the opposition he’ll face.

“We couldn’t be happier with him,” Lyons says. “Whether that makes him good enough or not, time will tell. It’s been a long time since his last racecourse appearance but he’s in good order and we’re happy that he’ll get the trip, but we won’t know it until he does it.

“If you asked me to name another horse in the race I couldn’t tell you. I’ve enough experts telling me who’s this, that or the other; it really doesn’t bother me.

“The only horse I can affect is the horse in my yard and that’s the only one I care about. If I have the best horse I’ll win, and if I don’t, I won’t.

“The Curragh is a stiff ask for him. I just want fast ground, like it is now, so we’re not getting the excuse of soft ground over the trip. It’s a stiff mile and I’d like to see him have a good clean run at it so that we have no excuses.”

Eight years

Siskin’s top-level success bridged a gap of eight years from Lyons’ first Group 1 winner, Lightening Pearl in the Cheveley Park Stakes, but he says he’s never left a Group 1 behind. He’d find it hard to live with it if he did because top-end winners are his own measure.

However, he has a functional attitude to such achievements. There was a commotion of superlatives for the Co Meath-based trainer when Siskin saw off Monarch Of Egypt in the Phoenix but Lyons thinks the media made a little too much of it.

“You can’t win a Group 1 race without a Group 1 horse,” he explains. “It’s simple as. I’ve been trying it for 25 years. I’ll take the plaudits no problem but there is too much made out of it. If John Gosden didn’t have Enable, he wouldn’t be able to win all those Group 1 races.

“Siskin has proven that if the likes of me get that type of horse, the likes of me can train a Group 1 winner. I want to win as many Group 1s as I can. That means I am doing my job with the horses I have been given to train. I want to retire knowing that I haven’t left one behind me that if I had 10 Group 1 horses in my yard, that I got each of them to win Group 1 races.

“I look every year and think: have I left one behind? I can’t say I have. I aim to do the very best with the pedigrees I’ve got. Ultimately when I pull up, I want to have as many winners as I possibly could have had and ultimately as many top winners as I possibly could have.”

Ambition

Lyons’s ambition has been evident from day one. When he started building on to his yard at Glenburnie, he said he was building it for the likes of Khalid Abdullah to have his horses trained here. That was a far-fetched aim at the time, but here we are, with Siskin carrying the same famous silks that mesmerised Lyons when he first got into racing, working for Peter McCreery.

“Since I was young, when I looked at something, I’d think there is no reason why I can’t do that,” Lyons says. “And if I thought that, then I’d think there is no reason why I can’t be the best at it. Maybe that was down to my mother, that sort of attitude.

“I just want to win. I just want to be good at what I do. I just want to go racing and have winners. It’s who I am. It’s in my make-up.

“Performing at the top table gives huge satisfaction. This is a hard industry, it’s a hard game. If you were getting up early every morning for 20 years and not seeing any progress, you’d be moving on to do something else.”

This ambition drives through the heart at Glenburnie, where the standards are always high. The aim is to make sure that the only difference when you’re taking on the big operations is the pedigrees.

Lyons explains: “Ballydoyle sets the standard. We might not always have got the horses that Ballydoyle has, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t work as hard and be as professional as them. In other words, our standards have to be as high as theirs, if not higher because that is who you’re competing against.

“If you’re coming to work here, you have to fit in. I’ll put it to you this way, I won’t sack you, the staff will sack you. It won’t be me that lets you go, it’ll be because you’re not pulling your weight with the people that are here already.

“It’s a very easy job once you get into the swing of it. We have a top-class head lad in Martin Horan and if you please him, the job will be grand, and if you don’t please him, you won’t last.

“I can’t do this without him. He started with me when he was 13. I’ve taught him what I wanted to do and how I wanted to do it.

“It’s not an army regime or anything. As far as I’m concerned it’s all about the horse. If you bring a bad vibe with you, you won’t be in the place too long. You’ve got to bring something to the table.”

The winners' wall \Healy Racing

Covid-19

Like all flat trainers in the country, Lyons is delighted to have racing back. Preparation of horses has been taken back to a simmer mode and it was just a case of work mornings becoming more interesting, with a requirement to think outside the box given there was no definite date for racing to return.

“I thought we were managed correctly,” he reflects. “Nobody knew what was going on. It was new to everyone. We were being led by medics, they have to tell us what is right and what is wrong. I think the country in general did the right thing.

“I personally think we could have been racing earlier. I definitely think that. I’m saying that as a trainer working in the industry. Our workforce kept going throughout the lockdown and we’ve had no issues, nobody sick, nobody missing work. The way we’re doing our business obviously worked and I think we could have brought that environment to a racetrack behind closed doors.

“It feels to me like we’re being asked to go across the picket line to go back racing and we shouldn’t feel like that. None of us should have to apologise for going back to work.

“I think our industry can come across as entitled sometimes and maybe that’s why we’re not liked.

“There is a train of thought out there that we’re all helicopters and Sheikhs. We’re not. The majority of us are normal people getting up every morning, exercising animals to try and put bread on the table. Like farmers milking cows, it’s just our way of life.

“The label of ‘the Sport of Kings’ was put on us many years ago and I think that has a negative connotation for racing today.”

That label, which pertains to the rich and entitled, is one thing for racing to contend with, the growing negative societal attitude towards betting is another. Lyons detests the betting link.

“I’m not a betting man. I never have been and I don’t run my horses to punt,” Lyons says. “From when I started in racing to where we are now, the gambling side has become nearly the story rather than the horse and I think that’s wrong.

“You see bookmaker’s representatives standing around trainers at the races, trainers and jockeys doing blogs, I totally, totally disagree with that. I couldn’t disagree with it more. It should be them and us.

“I’ve never been approached by a bookmaker to do a blog, probably because I’ve been outspoken about this before, but even if I was, I wouldn’t take it.

“Don’t get me wrong, I’m very aware of the importance of betting with regard to income for the industry. But smoking kills, drinking kills and breaks up families and so does gambling. We can’t just turn around because it suits us and say gambling is good. We have to be careful who we align our cart with.

“They stopped tobacco sponsorship many years ago because it gave the wrong vibes so you have to say hold on a second, somebody has to have a look at this. Professionals should not be sponsored by these guys.”

Lyons’s standards clearly stretch beyond the walls of Glenburnie but to the industry as a whole and he bemoans the lack of progress made with each passing decade.

“Are we going to go back the same old rat race after the lockdown? Probably. Should we be improving every year? Of course we should.

“For example, should we have stewards on the track? Is there a need for having five individual stewards sitting behind a table? There absolutely is not.

New technology

“We’re in an era where technology has advanced so many aspects of work life. Surely we can have three professional guys in a room in headquarters watching racing every day, communicating to the stipendiary steward at the track and before the horses come back to the parade ring, a decision is made. That is where we should be.

“Especially during a pandemic, when we’re saying that the less bodies turn up at the races the better, why do we need a stewards’ room? Isn’t this a great opportunity to see if we can implement a new system?

“And if we don’t like the result we can appeal it. But the day of sport being held up with stupid enquiries, which are prehistoric and that date back to the days where there were no telephones, never mind internet, it doesn’t make any sense.”

Standards

Lyons also believes there has and always will be a significant responsibility on the top trainers to keep the highest standard possible in all walks of the game.

He explains: “The standard is set by Aidan O’Brien. It has been set by the likes of Dermot Weld, Jim Bolger, John Oxx and Kevin Prendergast before. As long as their standards are high, the people that follow will have their standards as high. If the standards drop at the top, it will drift down the pyramid.

“It’s always set by the guys at the top and that’s why I’ve promised myself that when I move up the table, and I always believed I would, that I’d always aim to leave the sport better for me being in it. If I didn’t do that, I’d deem myself selfish.

“One thing that has definitely improved in the last five years is ground conditions at racetracks. The ground is now much more consistent than before and that is down the professionalism of the courses and the clerks.

“But certain trainers are now asking for the word ‘firm’ to never appear in a going description. Don’t forget, I was the only trainer who pulled his horses out of the Irish Champions Weekend meeting in 2018 because of the state of the ground. It was the biggest weekend of the racing year and I pulled my horses out and walked away. Others ran their horses and some were injured.

“The racecourse chief executive Pat Keogh said in racing papers at the time that I was wrong not to run my horses. I took that on the chin, but fast forward to now and they’re using that weekend as an example of how the ground was too quick. So let’s not be hypocritical here. If you turn up at the races and you don’t like the ground, walk away.

“Trainers should not be allowed contact a racecourse and demand a certain type of ground. It’s the same way they wouldn’t like an owner telling them how to train.

“My point is, turn up at the races and if you’re not happy, walk away, if you’re happy, run. But don’t pee in the soup for everybody else.”

Return

In the meantime, it’s all about racing returning and both Guineas races next weekend. Siskin takes on the 2000 and Lyons could be well represented in the 1000, with four entries at the time of writing.

Given the protocols limiting the usual raceday scenario, Lyons feels there is no need for him to be at the races, especially if it means taking the place of one of his staff members.

In that case he faces a somewhat surreal prospect of watching Siskin from his own living room but that doesn’t bother him at all.

“It’s a high class problem to have and I haven’t decided yet,” Lyons says. “I’ll see what my staff say but if there is no point in me being there, I won’t go. I’ve always said a trainer’s job is at home anyway.

“I’d love to think that owners or their representatives could return to the track sooner rather than later. It’s more important that they are racing than some others. They are the ones paying the bills.”

When all is said and done, the record books won’t show if he was at the races or not. They’ll only be relevant to him if they result in another Group 1.

Because that’s what it’s all about.