IT is 13 years since Moon Dice gave trainer Paul Flynn his greatest day in training when he won the Galway Hurdle under a fine ride from Tom Doyle, a rare win in modern times for a small-medium sized yard in one of Galway’s marquee NH events.

The popular former jockey from Celbridge had got into training “by accident really” after an injury had halted his riding career prematurely but it was an important win at the time for a yard not long in operation.

He recalls: “Things had gone quietish after the economic downturn before he won the Galway Hurdle but we got a lift from him and a few years more momentum from that day. He should have won a Greatwood Hurdle next time out when he was very unlucky. He then got a bad fall over hurdles and was never the same, though I remember Robbie Power gave him a great ride one day to win a Cork novice chase.

“Moon Dice was by the sire Norwich and they tended to be temperamental horses, he was an aggressive horse and if he didn’t get his own way he would pull up in two strides, he just had an attitude. I would love to have him now though, I think I would do a better job!”

Though Flynn doesn’t have a comparable horse at present, the same people who owned Moon Dice have five-time winner The Big Chap with him and he isn’t far off that level. He failed to fire in the Lord Hemphill Memorial Chase at Galway, and, unfortunately, the yard suffered the loss of another stable favourite, seven-time winner Golden Sandbanks, in a nasty incident on the opening night of this year’s meeting.

After a fine riding career, mostly defined by some big race wins for Phillip Hobbs, notably on What’s Up Boys in the Coral Cup at Cheltenham and Hennessy Gold Cup at Newbury, Flynn and his wife Claire, from Bristol and who also worked for Hobbs, bought their current base in Colehill, Co Longford with the intention of breaking and pre-training horses.

Getting started

However, it snowballed into a training yard without him really intending it to.

“I had shattered my elbow in a fall and it never really came right, I couldn’t straighten it,” he recalls.

“I ended up buying this place, breaking horses. We had two young kids at the time and I just went away from riding. I came back and rode one on the flat just for a bit of craic but I didn’t take it seriously again. I wouldn’t have given me a ride again, put it that way!

“Then a friend of mine, Michael Connolly, sent an owner, Alan O’Reilly, to me and he sent a horse called Bronte Bay to be broken. Alan is in Australia now. That horse was going well, so I got my licence out and he did well on the track. We ended up with four or five fairly quickly and they all ran well, so I thought it was an easy game. Then I got bigger and realised it wasn’t!

“At the time, Gordon Elliott had started not long before me and we had great craic nipping over to England with horses and Gordon is really good to me now to this day. I did know him when I was younger, he is a great help to anyone starting off.”

Flynn typifies the situation that most trainers in Ireland face; in a struggle of sorts but kept going by a mixture of hope of finding the next good horse, fear of the unknown outside of what they know and love for what they do; he clearly still gets lots of pleasure out of the game.

Economic downturn

“We had a good few bad years after the downturn and we are only getting going again really,” he says.

“When we were really struggling, John Eastwood came aboard, along with Paddy Maguire. Patrick Hanlon helps us out a lot, got the gallops sorted out when we were under pressure, so only for the likes of them coming along we might have given up the ghost. We can hopefully repay them with a few winners.”

Flynn was speaking about his career on the long journey from Longford to Cork to saddle Solar Drive in the last race at an evening meeting, a worthwhile trip as the improving three-year-old won again.

The previous day, he was galloping horses at the Curragh when his lorry broke down. He borrowed another one, which later broke down as well - there is plenty of strife to overcome in the pursuit of winners.

However, the one aspect of training he doesn’t struggle with is good help. He speaks with enthusiasm about the great bunch of people who make his training operation function. That so many people are so loyal to him suggests that they knock plenty of enjoyment out of being involved too.

Little Queenie has progressed from a mark of 69 to 96 across her last nine starts \ Healy Racing

“I am definitely just the name on the trainer’s sheet, though,” he concedes.

“It is a big team effort. If you tried to do it all yourself you would have no winners. Claire, my wife, is obviously a big part of it. My daughter Ciara (22), is a serious worker, she looks after all the feed, she is very interested and does a lot of the racing as well. She has done well riding on the track too considering that she only started riding in races at 19.

“She hurt her knee and couldn’t get back at it full-time but she will do it for a bit of fun. Her regular ride Power Drive is retired but we will try to find another one for her to ride. My brother Neal helps a lot, Shane Rhatigan is our physio, Ronan Norton our farrier has a great interest in training, he was a farrier in Ballydoyle for a good few years.

Loyal team

“Ger Hussey, who used to train, brings the horses racing for us a lot, does a lot of the driving. Lots of local people come to ride out: Katie Mee, Susan Lee, Ciaran Quigley to name a few. We have other lads coming in too - we are lucky.”

There is also a strong team of jockeys to put the finishing touch to inmates when needed.

“Ben Kennedy and Kevin Sexton come in to school jumps horses and Robert Whearty comes in to ride work on the flat ones a bit lately,” says Flynn.

“We can also go to the Curragh and ask any of the top jockeys to ride work; Shane Foley and Seamie Heffernan were there to ride horses for various trainers lately, we are lucky in Ireland there are so many top jockeys available for smaller trainers to use.”

Moon Dice was a popular winner of the 2011 Galway Hurdle under Tom Doyle for the Flynn team \ Healy Racing

The current star amongst his flat horses is improving sprinter Little Queenie, owned by Mike Connolly, who has risen to a rating of 96 after notching her fifth win lately at Dundalk. He enthuses: “She’s declared to run on Saturday [today] at the Curragh, and we will try to pick up a little bit of blacktype with her. If we have to travel to England we will. As to why she has done so well in the last year, you know, she is still only five, we all expect them to do well at two and three but I think lots of horses are retired too early, obviously the real good ones are, but I think they can keep improving like a National Hunt horse, even though you train them differently.

Sprinting campaigns

“Some sprinters come good when they are six or seven. There is definitely an art to training sprinters. I think the reason English sprinters are usually better than ours is that there are way more races for them, they get more practice. They are not a horse you have to really train hard, you could run them every week if there was a race, they are well able for it, as long as you are not expecting to win every week!”

Another useful horse in the yard is the aforementioned Solar Drive.”He is a nice, young horse who has done well for us and will go three-year-old hurdling later,” Flynn expands.

“He was a lucky purchase, we took a chance on him, we bought him online last year, he was sourced through Aubrey McMahon’s Temple Bloodstock and he worked out well.

“The only off putting thing was he had a barrier trial for Jessie [Harrington] and it looked terrible but we put that down to maybe not handling the track. He has really come to himself this year.” However, Flynn does find it difficult to come by new horses.

“If people approach us with a budget to find a horse, we will do our best to find horses for them but it isn’t easy,” he explains.

“I don’t mind what I train but I think I would advise to get flat horses, it is nearly easier to win with some of them.

“There are not as many superpowers running horses at the lower level on the flat, which gives the smaller operators a chance, whereas over jumps they could have runners in every race, so it is harder to avoid them over jumps. That is just the way it is, I just find it harder to get the horses to beat them.

“We have a lot of older horses that will probably be retired at the end of this year and we are just hoping people will reinvest and buy new horses.

“I send all my horses to be rehomed to a great place called Solway racehorses in Scotland, they do a great job with them. They show them and give people updates on them, so you know they have gone to a good place.

“Ger Hussey is in charge of it over here and is trying to petition for a similar place in Ireland. Moon Dice stayed closer to home, though. My sister Rebecca looks after him, he got a great home in retirement!”

Paul Flynn is one of many trainers in the country who deserve more and better class horses but it is very competitive; he acknowledges himself that there are some great trainers in Ireland who only train five winners a year.

However, there is also no doubt that Flynn gets the best out of every horse in his care, frequently improving the cast-offs he gets from other yards. The hope is that more people will recognise that.