FROM Boolavogue to the 1916 rebellion, famous sons of Wexford have been well able to hatch a battle plan - so don’t be surprised if another Easter Rising reaps dividends from the same quarters in this year’s Irish Grand National.

With a 2025 Cheltenham Festival triumph already in the bag with Daily Present, Paul Nolan will be very much in bonus territory when heading to Fairyhouse on April 21st with his Kim Muir winner. But that doesn’t mean a first success in Ireland’s most famous handicap wouldn’t be any less sweet for the Toberona trainer.

If anything, victory in the BoyleSports-backed highlight would cap off an excellent season that has seen him achieve something only he, Willie Mullins, Gavin Cromwell and Joseph O’Brien have managed this term - saddling a winner at each of the Leopardstown Christmas Festival, Dublin Racing Festival and Cheltenham Festival in 2024/’25.

There easily could have been even more to shout about had circumstances unfolded a little more kindly too. Park Of Kings [runs at Aintree today] was a luckless second in a €100,000 premier handicap hurdle at the Leopardstown fixture in December, while Feet Of A Dancer left the feeling of one that got away in the Pertemps Final at Cheltenham.

The €1,500 bargain buy came from a mile back to finish an admirable fourth.

The mood in the Nolan camp would have understandably been muted for a period after that Thursday disappointment at Cheltenham, but it only made Daily Present’s sumptuous strike against hot favourite Johnnywho all the more appreciated on the same afternoon. “When you’re going over with a few runners, Cheltenham can be a long week if you don’t come out of the place with a winner,” says Nolan, speaking over the hum of his Massey Ferguson, while harrowing the gallop in between lots on a belter of a spring morning.

“If we hadn’t got one on the board, and with things not going to plan with Feet Of A Dancer, we would have had our tails between our legs. We were so deflated after the Pertemps. The difference one winner makes, though… It makes everything feel different. For the smaller outfits getting a winner at Cheltenham, it’s the very same as an underdog winning an All-Ireland Final. Take Clare winning the hurling last year and the good feeling from the outside counties towards them. That feeling of goodwill towards you is the very same at Cheltenham.”

On his recollections of the battling success under fellow Wexford native Barry Stone, Nolan adds: “I usually go away and watch those races by myself in the farrier box down in the saddling area. I go in there every time, because there’s nobody telling me how well you’re going...

“When a fella starts telling me ‘Jesus, you’re jumping fair well’, I actually want to physically give him a kick!

Ride of the week

“It all just went perfectly right for the horse. For all the good rides at Cheltenham this year, I’d say it was the ride of the week - it would have taken something special to beat it. For a chap who had never ridden in England before, with very few track winners to his name, if you had a joystick controlling the horse from the stands, you couldn’t have had him in a better position at any stage.”

It probably says something about the emphasis of the Nolan training business, based just outside Enniscorthy, that from having what he describes as between 30 to 40 horses in training, the four-time Cheltenham Festival-winning trainer still managed to send seven runners to the Cotswolds bonanza.

Until this week, he hadn’t saddled any runners since St Patrick’s Day at Wexford, a meeting at which he registered a winner, two seconds, a third and a fourth. When factoring in that, according to IrishRacing.com data this week, Willie Mullins and Gordon Elliott have been represented by a combined total of 583 different horses in Ireland this season, there appears to be a push towards quality over quantity for the man who will mark three decades with a licence next year.

“In fairness, a winner everywhere is important,” comes the response to that suggestion.

“You’re always nervous on the day that they’ll run well and you have some sort of analysis to do after the race - that you haven’t a creak in your neck looking back for your fella out of the tele wondering what you can say afterwards! Obviously, it’s great when you see some of these horses improving through the ranks [from lower grades]. With the type of horses we try to have, you’d almost be hoping they’ll reach a certain standard or the owners mightn’t want them.

“As far as business goes, you’re relying on a strong base of owners. For us small guys - if you want to call everyone that outside the top four or five stables - you need that support. Like, we had to put a consortium together to keep Latest Exhibition in the yard or else he was going to be sold. Now, the horse didn’t last long enough to fulfil what we felt he was going to do [fatally injured in the 2021 Hatton’s Grace at the age of eight], albeit he still won his Grade 1 and was unlucky to get beaten a neck by Monkfish in the Albert Bartlett.

“He was probably just unlucky overall to meet Monkfish, because he probably cost us four Grade 1s. The battle they had [over fences at the 2020 Leopardstown Christmas Festival]... It finished the two of them, in my opinion. Neither horse was the same after that. We didn’t go to Cheltenham because of it and how Monkfish won that Brown Advisory that spring, I’ll never know, because he wasn’t at his best. It was a disaster for us not to be there on the day, but how do you have a crystal ball? It’s like people coming out with the argument that Lossiemouth should have run in the Champion Hurdle because of what happened in the race. You just couldn’t have seen that coming beforehand.”

Sales competition

He adds: “There’s no point in getting down about anyone dominating any sport. The one thing about it is, if you’re always beaten in the sales ring, you’re probably going to have a tougher task on the track. Still, in saying that, we’ve had a good chance and bought some decent horses, while also paying good money for ones who didn’t work out. That’s the way it is. It’s a numbers game. The same thing is happening to the bigger lads, but the numbers mask over the disappointing ones.”

How does the National Hunt recruitment picture shape up for Nolan nowadays?

“The way France is gone, if something shows form out there, you’re talking €300,000 or €400,000 straight away - no matter what size it is!” says the 56-year-old, who is just one shy of a 10th career Grade 1 winner.

“That’s gone crazy because of the success of French horses in recent years. With point-to-points, the obvious one will make a fortune and we all know that. We went point-to-pointing the other day to try to buy and you know the horses who win too far, that’s going to be €500,000. Game over. You know there isn’t even a point in going down to look at him.

“That means you’re trying to look outside the box a little bit. The one that might be a bit unlucky, could improve a bit and so on. The owners are the most important thing, though. The most important [banging his hand off the tractor steering wheel]. The ones who stick with you, stick with you through the bad times. You know the people who start questioning you when things aren’t totally going your way, but we have great people in that department, who have really stuck by us down the years.”

That loyalty was certainly tested during the 2016/’17 campaign. Having consistently sent out between 32 and 40 winners a season in the early noughties, a time when the family-orientated outfit cashed in with a tremendous three Galway Hurdle wins in six years, there were just five domestic National Hunt winners during the entirety of the season. Even two and three seasons earlier, Nolan had clicked with 22 and 24 winners respectively.

Not every operation is able to withstand such a drought. However, there has always been a determined, no-nonsense frankness to the Nolan team. They approached the period with the realism you’d expect of the hard-grafting people at the centre of it all.

“We knew it was going to happen that time. The year before it, we knew we were f***ed looking at what was coming through - there was essentially nothing coming,” Nolan says.

Pragmatic approach

“Horses had gone by the wayside for different reasons and that isn’t easy - but at least we knew that was the case. You have to be realistic. It’s like being an underage manager for the young lads in your parish, and you go into the primary school to find that the baby infants’ class that year is made up of two boys and 14 girls. You see there and then that your lads’ under-12 hurling team isn’t going to be great!”

Whatever about understanding what is ultimately coming down the tracks, facing up to that reality every day is surely a different, more challenging matter?

“As many bad days that you have, I’d still be looking back at replays of the good days to keep myself in good form. For a month after, I’d be watching back the videos of An Peann Dearg winning at Leopardstown when I’m coming down in the tractor, to put myself in a good headspace.

“I’d be watching Daily Present winning at Cheltenham too, and every time, it’d bring the hairs right up the back of your neck. That’s the f***ing truth. To look at something that’d put you in good form. I’d never look back at the near misses or races that don’t go your way - you won’t ever find me watching Feet Of A Dancer in the Pertemps or Latest Exhibition getting beaten in the Albert Bartlett. What’s the point?”

Nolan, who proudly has an All-Ireland intermediate hurling medal with Wexford to his name from 1992, has no interest in stirring up controversy, but made one observation when asked about the topic of prize money levels in Irish racing - something flagged up by both the Irish Racehorse Trainers’ Association and Association of Irish Racehorse Owners in last week’s The Irish Field. Both groups are clearly frustrated by Horse Racing Ireland putting less into prize money in 2024 than it did in the pre-Covid year of 2019, despite the total prize money pool increasing from €66 million to almost €70 million in that timeframe (and HRI’s Government grant rising 13%).

“The flat just seems to be a bit better overall, but my feeling would be that Leopardstown’s prize money for the Christmas Festival was ordinary enough,” says Nolan.

“There were multiple races run for €7,200 and €9,000 to the winner, and I think even the handicap chase that An Peann Dearg won was paying €18,000 to the winner. The Christmas Festival should be worth more than that. When you think of the crowds that are coming to those meetings, and even the capped capacity at the Dublin Racing Festival and tickets being sold to England, there should be no race at Leopardstown over Christmas worth less than €20,000 to the winner.”

Diverse business

Nolan is anything but slow when it comes to the commercial realities of the game too. This season he expects to have four two-year-olds for the flat, following on from a successful trading venture with Jungle Peace after finishing third in a juvenile maiden at Dundalk last October. The Bungle Inthejungle filly was well found at just €14,000 as a yearling, and even better business was Nolan’s son Barry buying her back for £5,000 after breezing under the Toberona Bloodstock banner at the Goffs UK Breeze Up Sale last April. She has won both her starts at Santa Anita for top California trainer Phil D’Amato since changing hands privately.

At a different tempo, plundering the Irish Grand National makes plenty of financial sense in its own right, with a cool €500,000 up for grabs. Coping with a 7lb higher mark than when winning by a neck last time won’t be easy for the DKCR Partnership-owned eight-year-old, but the Kim Muir has a history of producing progressive staying chasers. Look no further than 12 months ago, when subsequent Gold Cup hero Inothewayurthinkin sluiced up off a sweet mark of 145.

Nolan has been on the premises in the Fairyhouse feature before as well. Latest Exhibition was only beaten a handful of lengths when fourth in the 2021 renewal, while the trainer also saddled the fourth and fifth in 2013, courtesy of the Gigginstown-owned Sweeney Tunes and Panther Claw.

“It didn’t happen for Daily Present in the Irish National last year [when pulled up], but I’d say he’s in a better place going to Fairyhouse this year. He’s been running in long-distance races, which can take its toll, but it is only his fourth run of the season. He ran well around there earlier in the year.

“The Irish National is getting classier every year, as is the case with so many of those bigger handicaps. There’ll never be a 110 horse winning the Thyestes like might once have been possible - you’d see a semi-Gold Cup type of horse winning it now. The prize money and the prestige of it for owners is fantastic, though. It’s a race anyone would love to win.”

The red tractor has been safely steered back to the yard and we hop down from the cab. Paul Nolan is back on the ground with attentions turned to the next lot, the next plan. Another famous Easter raid firmly on the horizon from this glorious corner of the sunny south east. As Cheltenham found out, the boys of Wexford will be ready for battle on the biggest stage.

THE merits of the modern-day Grand National tend to be heavily discussed in the lead-up to today’s feature, and Paul Nolan believes changes to remove heightened risk from many of the fences is a step in the right direction.

“I’m in favour of not having fences with booby traps for horses,” he says. “I don’t see the point of horses dropping two feet at the back of them - the renovated fences are a good thing. People might say it’s not a jumping test any more, but it’s just different and I think you’d have to forgive the [faller/injury] stats the year that the protestors delayed the race and got onto the track. In my opinion, those protesters were probably the cause of horses getting hurt that year. It was disgraceful what went on and, as a spectacle, it looked uncomfortable to watch. Horses being brought into the parade ring twice, horses who were never free before running keen and sweating beforehand.

“Especially with the worldwide viewing the race gets, nobody wants to see an issue for any horse in the Grand National. It’s the same as when you have horses in a field at home - if there are any chances for a horse to bang against something in a field, you’re going to move any of those things. You’re protecting them at home all the time and you want the same outcome at the races too.”

Nolan feels that Irish racing is in a strong position regarding the efforts of the clerks of the course and groundstaff teams when it comes to delivering safe jumping ground.

“I have to say, they’re doing a great job,” he says.

“All of those lads, the likes of Brendan Sheridan, Paul Moloney and so on, they really do care. They work with us. I know a couple of lads are going to be contrary as regards bullshit, saying their National Hunt horses need good ground, but it’s not flat racing. They’re not carrying 8st or 9st, running on a level surface without having the pressure of jumping thrown in. It’s a different job altogether and they do their best.”