PHILIP Rothwell is in good form. On this Tuesday afternoon and during this current jumps season. Why wouldn’t he be?

In his 26th year training, he has already surpassed his seasonal best total, and we still have four months of the season to go. His 34 winners has him currently placed fifth in the trainers’ championship - an outstanding performance whatever happens from here on in.

Training racehorses could be described as some sort of mad science and Rothwell could well be a fine example of that scientist. The 46-year-old is driven by a passion to an endeavour that looks nonsensical to some – trying to compete against the best with pennies to their pounds – but strip it all back and here is a man who loves what he does.

There are 60 boxes around Fairwood Stables in Tinahely, Co Wicklow, with the vast majority of the horses sticking their heads out the doors acquired for modest fees and racing at a level that matches up with their price tags. But their trainer is maxing them out on the track, eking out everything he can with what he is working with.

He has carved out a niche for himself in a changing landscape and while he is boxing well above his weight this season, he is miles away from anything that could represent a delusion of grandeur. He’s ridden that train before, shot for the moon and planned for what he was going to do before he got there.

It could have ended in disaster as there were lean years. One winner in 2014/’15 season. Just four the next, but he has grasped the opportunity of a rare second chance and climbed back, and now, he’s content to just keep doing what he’s doing.

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Ronan Groome (RG): So the last time we did this interview, you’d just had a winner at Cheltenham and were going through a bit of a resurgence with 19 winners that season. You’ve already gone past your best ever tally this season so the obvious place to start is to ask what has clicked?

Philip Rothwell (PR): It has been a build. That season you mention was a great season. We had only half a season and we clocked up 19 winners. Last year we had 18 winners after that very strong season and the same thing will probably happen again next year, we won’t be as strong as this season. That is because we have horses at a grade that are running predominantly in handicaps. We have a lot of lower grade horses, so when they go and win races, they go up (in the handicap), we become less competitive and when you’re less competitive, you’re not going to be as strong. That is the way of the world for us. We’re not in the sphere of buying expensive pointers that we can run in maiden hurdles. We have to constantly build our team at the level we are operating at. That’s what I’m about, I can’t leave the team stagnant. I have to keep selling and I have to keep buying to compete.

RG: Do you enjoy that aspect?

PR: I do. I buzz off it. Dave Keena asked me before Christmas, what percentage of the horses that I win with would I have bought, and I looked back over them and I’d say at least 95%. The horses that are sent to me probably haven’t been as successful as the horses that we’ve gone out and sourced ourselves. A huge number of them have won. It makes me understand that I’ve to go find those horses myself and sell them, that they’re not going to just arrive on your doorstep.

RG: What are the main factors that can improve a horse switching yards?

PR: Obviously we all have different facilities. A new facility might suit a horse better. We have our own feed regime, our own water supply, and natural well water. So feed, water, farrier, dentist, physio, team of vets, very good riders for feedback, and then race planning. I think race planning is huge.

RG: Do you do that all yourself?

PR: All myself. Run them in the right races or don’t run them at all. Always run them for a reason.

RG: How much time goes into that relative to everything else?

PR: Hours. My diary lives with me in the front of the jeep. I’d know what everything is doing for the next three weeks or what we’re aiming for to have them doing. But I’d also know the long term plan is for the next three months. Now the long term plan changes regularly with what has happened in the three weeks but I still have to work towards it. I hope to have a few runners at the Punchestown Festival again this year. I’d have highlighted three or four races that we’ll aim three or four horses at and we’re working towards that. If we don’t do that we’re certainly not going to have a winner at the Punchestown Festival and I’m fortunate enough to have the horses to aim at it now.

RG: That is key for a yard your size? The margins are tighter?

PR: Absolutely. We don’t have 10 horses entered in maiden hurdles and only run one on the day. When our horses are entered we’re usually running. I don’t waste owners’ entry fee money. I see a huge number of horses not running after being entered and I can’t understand it. For a small team, a huge amount of race planning has to go in.

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The adoration was transcended when in 2006 Rothwell sent Native Jack out to win the Cross Country Chase at the age of just 28. The equivalent of a 16-year-old footballer scoring at the World Cup. Later that day he was introduced to J.P. McManus, who told him that if he ever saw a nice horse, to give him a call. He already had Gigginstown-owned horses in his yard. And he already had 100 winners to his name. That was it. Cheltenham was a mainstay. The Festival was at his feet. But it was only when 33/1 McAlpine scythed his way through a field of 18 runners to win a 0-125 novices’ handicap hurdle earlier this month that he’d taste a second success at Prestbury Park. The Irish Field, November 2021

RG: Talk to me about your success now relative to that early success in your career – I’m sure it feels a lot different now.

PR: I’ve always said that I grew too quick. Things were really good, we got on well, I’m not slating myself, but we grew very fast when I was young and I made loads of mistakes. As far as I’m concerned this is my second chance but it has been for the last four or five years. It’s very hard in a small country to get a second chance for yourself in sport so I felt I had to get down and dirty and work hard and reinvent myself all over again. I think we’re doing that pretty well. A lot of mistakes I made the first time around, even though I’ve never stopped, I won’t make them a second time round.

RG: So off the back of this success, what way are you thinking now? Would you be hoping to get a few new owners, or that big owner every trainer craves?

PR: That is just not something that happens. I’m very fortunate. I have very good people that own horses here. I know that going up to try get into the first four in the trainers’ championship is not achievable, it’s just not. The lads in front of me have 250 horses, we’re battling with 60. We need to do the very best we can at all times with the horses we have and I think we do that. Because we are so condensed, I feel we can do things as well or better than anybody else. I have a very good team here.

RG: So is it case of keep doing what you’re doing well?

PR: If I build another 100 stables, I’m still not going to be in the first four trainers in the country and I don’t feel I’d be that much further on. I’ve been that guy before, we expanded very quickly. We don’t need to do that this time, I need to look after the people who have looked after me. There’s a number of owners that have been with me 15 or 20 years, they’ve looked after me really well. It’s my turn now to look after them. We’ll definitely welcome new business but we’ll definitely be careful about it and we’ll see where we go. I can see a real niche for what we’re doing now and I feel there is a real opportunity for us.

RG: How so?

PR: There’s a lot of very good jumps trainers that have gone training flat horses but I think that better type of National Hunt horse is more accessible now. Probably not to get to the next level but at my own level, I seem to be able to source these horses pretty well. There’s huge numbers of horses being sold through the point-to-point sphere every week. If you go to a point-to-point on a Sunday and there’s two four-year-old races and two five-year-old races, you can be near sure that nine out of the 10 runners in each race are for sale.

RG: That’s interesting because I suppose the general view out there would be that the good point-to-point stock is out of bounds for the smaller yards?

PR: Yes, but you can still find good value there. I bought Deons Diamond (won twice this season) last year, she was second in a four-year-old maiden, the winner was quite highly thought of, the third horse was quite highly thought of. She wasn’t expensive because she was in the second division of a mares’ race, where in the first division Colin Bowe’s won by 10 lengths and made 300 thousand plus at the sales. I thought she still ran better than the mare that was second to Colin’s in the other division. She was in and around the 20,000 bracket. You just have to weigh everything up – form, times, the handler’s results with horses that have been sold out of their yard, what owner would suit this horse.

RG: It seems like your biggest challenge, finding the horses to compete, is probably your biggest motivation as well?

PR: The perception out there of National Hunt racing is extremely wrong. There is a perception that the top trainers and top owners control the sport and that other people can’t have fun with it. That is so untrue. I think this is a time, more so than six or seven years ago, where there is way more opportunity for everybody else to get involved. I know the bigger yards will be all over the Dublin Racing Festival, but what about the rest? Look at England at the moment. We were about to go to the Lanzarote Hurdle on Saturday with a 120-rated horse. Emmet Mullins had a horse in the Greatwood rated 110.

RG: You mentioned in a piece with Irishracing.com recently that you think there is an opportunity at the store sales as well?

PR: There’s so much more opportunity now than what there was five or six years ago. I think people are missing that. You can buy an upper-end store horse for 50 or 60,000 with a nice pedigree at the premier sales in Ireland. Or you can go to the July Sale two months later and you can buy a horse with the very same pedigree, with a good vet cert, that’s an inch and a half smaller for 2,000. Now is the time to be buying those horses because there’s huge numbers, we’re way overproducing, and because we’re over producing, we’re producing horses of a higher standard than previously. There is definitely an opportunity. There’s going to be a huge amount more Hewicks.

RG: That’s exciting.

PR: 100%. There are going to be so many more good horses getting down to the smaller yards. The problem is having the people to support you to go through the numbers to find the right horse. You’ll probably have to do it twice as many times as someone spending 50,000, but that’s all. I think it’s achievable at the moment. We just need to stay buying them and stay going through them.

RG: So what’s your stance on what Willie and Gordon are doing at the moment?

PR: Two amazing guys. I think if Willie Mullins took on a derelict hotel tomorrow morning, he’d turn it into a five star. I think he’s an amazing business person, maybe even more so than a racehorse trainer. He has a wonderful team around him - Ruby, David Casey, Patrick, Jackie. Gordon is the same, he has built up a serious team. Gordon is buying huge numbers to try to compete against Willie to be champion trainer. I feel a little bit sorry for him because he’s training a lot more winners than Willie is now. He’s achieving huge things and they’re pushing each other, pushing boundaries. They’re bringing overseas owners into Irish racing which is very good and they’re dragging the rest of us up with them. I can certainly say my operation is better than it ever was.

RG: Taking on the flat never appealed to you?

PR: I think anybody who has ever spoken to me at a jumps meeting would understand that I just love jumps racing. I’ve had a runner at Royal Ascot before and of course I’d love a good flat horse but running horses in a 45-65 at Dundalk doesn’t really appeal to me. For a farmer’s son in Wicklow, I always thought the greater opportunity to get to the top was in the jumps game, and the top is Cheltenham.

RG: You said to me the last time you’ll die a happy man if you trained a graded winner at Cheltenham.

PR: It hasn’t changed and won’t change. You have to have that goal. Some people’s goal is to be champion trainer, my goal is to turn up with a really good horse and show the world what we can do with it on the biggest stage. We’re working towards it all the time and if I didn’t think we could do it, why would we stay doing it? You have to have that drive.

RG: That’s the main thing that gets you up?

PR: Probably, but I love training jumps horses, love training for the people I train for and the staff. I hugely appreciate everyone here and that wasn’t always the case, when before we might have had to take on people because we needed numbers. The people here now are top class. We try to make it a nice atmosphere, I never saw any point in roaring at anyone, you want everyone to enjoy themselves as much as they can in here.

RG: The days are long enough?

PR: You could have 15-hour days during the summer. Start at 6.30am and you could be back from Sligo or Ballinrobe at 3.00am, then up the next morning for Killarney. Summer racing takes its toll. I love the winter but you’ve the point-to-points there as well, which are important as a shop window.

RG: Do you have something that gives you a break from racing?

PR: Just family really. We try to get away somewhere for a couple of hours when it’s possible. The only down time I’ve had in 25 years came during Covid and I’m probably one of the only people in the wide earthly world that can say that part of Covid I really enjoyed. I really enjoyed the family time during Covid. It probably came at a really good time for me that I was able to step back and see that we were about to hit a better place again and that we were on track.

RG: You’re content?

PR: Very content. Content that we want to stay doing what we’re doing. Content that I don’t need to grow huge numbers. Content that the people that own the horses with me are extremely nice people and are very good. Really content with the team of staff around me. That makes life an awful lot easier.