KATIE McGivern rarely has a second of free time but it has ever been thus. She was bred in the purple, daughter of jockey and trainer Tommy, who sadly passed away in 2020, and Joanna Morgan, the history-making, no-nonsense jockey/trainer from Wales.
McGivern saw hard work in racing and trading from as long as she could remember. Though she dabbled in the former as a jockey, it was the sales that intrigued her and drew her in, even after she qualified as a physio.
In the past 12 months however, the boss of Derryconnor Stud in Co Wexford, has added another string to her bow, as a trainer of two progressive speedballs that go into the prestigious €100,000 Rockingham Handicap on tomorrow’s Dubai Duty Free Irish Derby card, with real chances.
This comes off the back of her most lucrative breeze-up season, where the vendor of Group 1 winner Helvic Dream and other elite operators such as Daban and Le Brivido, consigned the top lot at the Goffs UK Breeze Up Sale in April, with a £50,000 Premier Yearling Sale Havana Grey filly that realised £420,000.
And if all that wasn’t enough, McGivern is expecting her third child with husband Tom Hore in November, to follow on from Zara (6) and Frankie (5).
“The Breeders’ Cup is strictly out if Kendall gets that big, ‘cos I can’t go!” she says with a laugh. “It’s not as if I’m busy enough,” she adds with faux exasperation.
Stern stuff
It comes as no surprise, given her DNA, that McGivern is made of stern suff. Having escaped any serious injury from her racing days, it was ironically after deciding to stop riding work that she was kicked in the face while leading a horse three years ago. That necessitated an airlift to Dublin after horrific damage that included a shattered eye-socket, nose and cheekbone. Five plates were inserted to hold her face together.
But equines are a passion and she was figuratively, if not literally, back on the horse in double quick-time. It helps, of course, that everything the 35-year-old Meath native touches seems to be turning to gold right now. The racing is very much a hobby. Kendall Roy is in the yard because while talented and bred to be quick, he didn’t heat up the clock at the Craven last year, being slower to mature.
So Majestic was bought back for €29,000, having gone through the ring for €168,000 two years ago.
McGivern was convinced of the Siyouni filly’s potential and was happy to back that judgement, particularly having been confident that coming from the William Haggas yard, she would not have had a bad experience.
While Kendall Roy has won four of his last five races, from a nursery at Naas last September through to a Curragh premier handicap at the beginning of the month, breaking a track record at Windsor in between, So Majestic did not appear to be going anywhere after giving her hobby handler a first winner at Down Royal this time last year and followed up quickly at Naas five days later.
In her next 10 outings, she was in the first three once, though that was a half-length third to Aesop’s Fables in Naas’ Listed Sole Power Stakes at 150/1 last May.
Still, she was a distant eighth of nine at Cork subsequently, so there were a few double-takes when she turned up in another listed contest at Ayr last Saturday but the ambition was rewarded though as she gained valuable blacktype by finishing third.
It was by some way a career best, as the four-year-old got to within two and a quarter lengths of Azure Blue, who beat multiple Group 1 winner Highfield Princess in a Group 2 last season.
“It’s brilliant. Like, last year I bought the pattern book for So Majestic and the first five starts, I was like, ‘Sure I know nothing. I can’t get a tune out of this one at all, even though I bought her back!’ And then this year I can’t keep up with it. I’m looking at entries and supplements and forfeits. And it’s all very exciting, very funny. Anyone that’s anything to do with me is getting a great buzz out of the two of them.
“One is easier trained than the other, but there’s no pressure, because I own both of them. If someone else owned So Majestic, there’s not in a million years they’d allow me to run her in the listed race. I didn’t really care. I knew she wouldn’t be last.
“She is very, very, very ground dependent. She wants good to firm. Good is nearly too slow for her. She wants firm ground, which we just didn’t get last year at all. She won on good ground twice, and then we didn’t get it for the rest of the summer.
“Every single run, I could tell you exactly why (she didn’t perform), though even my closest friends were losing faith. She just needs loads of pace in the race and she’ll finish.”
The plan
And that’s the salient point. Some might think her mark has been ruined now, and that So Majestic should have farmed a slew of handicaps first before entering stakes company but that was the plan. But the opposition wasn’t good enough given her racing style. She needs better rivals to perform at her optimum.
“I tried to do it the right way, going up the handicap. It went from bad to worse, and it went slower and slower, the more I was going down the handicap. And so I bit the bullet when we got fast ground. We gave it a go, and she proved us right.”
Though she has what she reckons is the most high-powered committee a two-horse trainer has ever had – her mother, her husband and bloodstock, agent, race planner and general consigliore Daniel Creighton – she has been minded to ignore their advice against turning So Majestic out so quickly again tomorrow. She is convinced that the filly takes her racing. It’s just about the rain staying away.
Kendall Roy has taken the more customary step-by-step route and McGivern is sure the three-year-old Twilight Son gelding is a stakes competitor in waiting.
“He did a piece of work earlier in the year with So Majestic, and he was only meant to be giving her a lead and he stayed with her. This is from what I thought was maybe a 70 horse last year. My jaw dropped, and I was like, ‘Oh, well, we’ll have a bit of fun,’ but they still have to do it on the track.
“He’s doing it the right way. He’s looked after himself, he’s teaching himself without giving himself a hard race. He’s a hard horse to keep fit. He does himself very well, and he finds everything very easy. Definitely, he’ll be next year’s horse.”
She was disappointed not to get in at Royal Ascot but given how quick the ground turned out to be and that he is still developing, it may have been for the best.
“We won’t abuse them this year. We’ll try and do it the right way and try and get another handicap anyway, and then we’ll make our mind up. Then that’s the advantage again of them being your own boss. I have to answer to absolutely no one.”
Give them time
Her dad was a big influence and his words in that regard still ring in McGivern’s ears.
“He was always on the end of the phone. ‘Give them time. Give them time. Give them time.’ He couldn’t give anything enough time.”
She remembers her mother’s days in the saddle. Morgan famously beat the great Lester Piggott by a nose in a driving finish at Phoenix Park when just 22, was the first woman to ride and be placed in an Irish classic, the first woman to ride at Royal Ascot, where she later saddled a winner. She also steered the productive, One Won One, who she trained, to victory at Galway in 1997 while four months pregnant with Katie’s brother, Morgan.
“Me and my sister would go off racing on our own when she was riding. I always remembered The Bower for Con Collins. He was my favourite horse she used to ride (they won the Irish Cambridgeshire together), but it was these big days. We’d be there and immersed in all of it… You’d never imagine you’d have a runner good enough to run in them, never mind having a chance.”
Morgan was always a vocal advocate of having horses out in the paddocks as much as possible, as is natural to them. Her daughter tries to do the same but in her area of expertise, it’s not always possible.
“With the breezers I don’t because they’re too highly strung, too fresh, too well fed, and the one or two that I’ve ever done it with, they pulled muscles, or they just had little problems that if you were training it wouldn’t matter, but if you’re not training, you’ve only one aim.
“But So Majestic spends nearly all day outside. She’s a filly that would be hard on herself so she needs the grass and she needs to be out for her mind.
Horses for courses
“Whereas Kendall, after he won the two races in England, I said, ‘Oh, he’s after lightening up and getting a bit backwards, I’ll throw him out for a week.’ And he was as fat as a barrel. I couldn’t get it off him. So he’s not allowed even look at a bit of grass, whereas she is out as much as she can every single day. So horses for courses on that one.
“But I’d be a big believer in it, with ulcers and their mental health and everything else. I couldn’t imagine staying in a stable for 24 hours a day. Could you be well in yourself looking at the four walls?”
The aforementioned Havana Grey filly is now known as Adrestia, trained by the Crisfords. Third on a nice introductory run at Windsor, she then finished midfield in the Queen Mary at Royal Ascot, showing more than enough to suggest a bright future.
“It was huge to top the sale, brilliant to do. You’re always learning. I remember an awful lot of the horses I’ve seen, even if I haven’t bought them. Someone else gets a touch. I’ll remember them, and I’ll reassess my view on what I should be buying.”
Her key criteria?
“It’s always the physical first, and then it’s the stallion, I suppose, or the pedigree, and you kind of just have to weigh it up. For me, it’s all to do with value. Some people will go in and just buy the racehorse, and that is definitely a good way to be.
“But you need to spend a big budget and possibly put yourself under a lot of pressure throughout the year, hoping to get it back if they’re good. And I probably err on the side of caution. I try and buy a bit of value, so even if they’re not fast, I get my money back.”
And to that end, she likes one particular stallion who is a little under the radar compared to the real high fashion producers.
“There’s one and he just has winners and winners and winners and really good winners. And at the sales, for the amount of stake sources he has, he’s not overly commercial or in demand, but his track record is mega for me anyway, and it would be Churchill.
“He can’t stop having good horses, whether it’s five furlongs to a mile, mile and two, he’s really versatile. Doesn’t matter what ground.”
Indeed, she has a Churchill filly that wasn’t commercial enough for the sales but is out of a blacktype mare, that will make her a three-horse trainer by the end of the season,
“I gave her a bit of a break and she’s back in now. I’d say she’ll make a two-year-old, hopefully August or September. She’s very much the mindset of Kendall, very chilled out, relaxed. Did everything easy. She was a very easy horse to get from A to B. So we’ll keep her for definite.”
Excitement
Maybe one for the Rockingham next year. But that’s for then. Right now, the excitement is palpable for tomorrow’s edition.
“It’s a prestigious race. It’d be one that I’ve always loved looking at, and grew up looking at and especially with the breeze-up horses. They’re the five-furlong bullets you want to have. When conditions are suiting for both of them, you might only have one roll of the dice of it so let’s go for it.
“It’s very exciting. It’s very fun for me. I don’t have to make a living from it, I don’t have to prove anyone right or wrong. I don’t care if I make a show of myself.”
No chance of that.