WHAT a pleasure it was to spend an hour and a half in the company of Valerie Cooper in her home in Rickardstown, just outside Newbridge, on Tuesday afternoon.

On Friday last, the 88-year-old received a standing ovation upon receiving the Racing Personality Award at the Irish Racehorse Owner Awards at Cashel Palace. Such awards usually feature very deserving winners but it’s hard to imagine a more deserving winner than Mrs Cooper, whose contribution to Irish racing can be described as ground-breaking, iconic and inspirational.

Together with her late husband Tom, they set up BBA Ireland, which broke hugely significant ground by becoming the first European bloodstock agency to attend yearling sales in America, as well as successfully sourcing champions in both codes closer to home.

When Tom sadly died in 1991, she became a member of the Turf Club and the Irish Racing Board, just as the governance of Irish racing was about to go through wholesale change, before joining numerous other committees. On Tuesday at the Curragh, she will act as a steward for the final time.

In ownership, she is best known for Opera Hat, the brilliant mare who famously captured the Mumm Melling Chase at Aintree in 1998 and won 15 times in all. And needless to say, that journey and her overall one, isn’t near finished yet, as she has relations of the mare ready to hit the track soon.

She summed it up best on stage when she said: “I can tell you I have had the most enormous pleasure out of the whole thing – and all the people I have met. It’s been a great journey, as they say. Thank you all enormously for it.”

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Ronan Groome (RG): Well, the most obvious place to start is at the start…

Valerie Cooper (VC): I was very privileged because of my parents who gave me freedom all over my childhood days. We lived on a farm, my father worked in Cork. I had ponies because I absolutely loved my riding. I used to go all over the countryside with the two alsatians, stop and have tea in the cottages. I’d ride through farms, schooling over banks and things - nobody ever said anything to me. From there I had to go to school which wasn’t much fun.

RG: You didn’t enjoy school?

VC: Not much. But when I used to go to the National school, which was a mile away from the farm gates, I used to ride the pony down every morning, tie it to the post and go to school. Then I used to give the other kids rides at 11am and I used to charge them a penny a ride.

RG: Tell me a bit about your parents - you’re father was Richard Beamish, of the stout brewery fame?

VC: Yes that’s correct. He was the chairman of Beamish and Crawford, which he inherited from my grandfather.

RG: Your parents weren’t really into racing or equestrian sport though?

VC: Horses weren’t part of my mother and father’s life at all. My mother was brilliant. She got two ponies fit for me after school so I could hunt five days a week. She was a very special lady. Dad became very interested in show jumping, I suppose after I got into it. I think he was chairman of the show jumping association in the southern region. He became a member of the Turf Club and he was a steward for a very long time.

RG:You’ve spoken of the great freedom you had when you were young?

VC: Unbelievable. The carpenters in the brewery made me, at my father’s request, a single trailer with a canvas top, so it was light enough to lift off the hitch of a car. Mum lent me the farm van, and from the age of 14 to 17 I had transport for the pony, and I hunted and went all over the place with no licence, no insurance, no nothing. I used to take the milk to the creamery every weekend. On my 17th birthday I got the bike out, Mum gave me five shillings and I went to the Garda station and bought my first licence and I got it renewed again only last week!

RG: So when did you get your first taste of racing?

VC: I would think through point-to-points when I was about 13 or 14. I remember I was at Dawson point-to-point when Sheila’s Cottage, who won the English National, dead-heated with a horse called Roland Roy, who I think was second. That really sparked me off, I was thinking: here are these wonderful horses and look what they’ve done.

RG: That time in your life, your late teens, strikes me as a time you really enjoyed yourself, youthful exuberance as they say.

VC: You can say that again. The hunt balls were great fun. A lot of them were held in private houses, not hotels. There’d be 200 people in a house, it’s extraordinary looking back on it.

RG: Can you describe what they were like?

VC: The music was of our generation. All the girls wore long dresses and all the men wore black ties and those who were hunting people wore pink coat evening jackets with proper lapels. I was a member of the United Hunt Club and we had green collars. It was quite a scene. It was like something out of an era that will certainly never exist again.

RG: There would be a real pride to represent your hunt?

VC: Yes. We had buttons on our coats which had UHC, United Hunt Club, the hunt that I mostly hunted with. The buttons were very important.

RG: So tell me about Activity. He was an amazing horse for you.

VC: He was. When I was 16, my grandfather Hitchmough, my mother’s father, died and he left me 400 pounds. I remember the joy of seeing the money. I went and bought Activity and I paid exactly 400 pounds for him. He was a sweet horse, a speed horse, not a puissance horse. He won an awful lot of prizes and I was very lucky to represent Ireland with him, which was fun too, I went with the Irish army as the only lady rider. Henry de Bromhead’s aunt, Iny de Bromhead was the first lady rider to represent the country I think and I was the second one.

RG: What was that like?

VC: It was marvellous. It’s a little bit of a faded memory now but you were put up in lovely hotels. I went to shows in Harringay, there was a big show in Blackpool and one it Rotterdam. I wasn’t particularly successful, the horse didn’t really like travelling. It’s all a bit surreal looking back on it but we were terribly well looked after. The army officers that we went with were superb, wonderful horse men.

RG: I heard you say before that you felt you could have been better if you really pushed yourself but it was always solely a source of enjoyment for you?

VC: There is no doubt about that. I took it seriously but if I’d pushed myself a bit more and then I knew it would have gone on a bit longer but then I got married when I was 22. So that finished all that.

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This colt is about as flawless an individual as I have ever seen. He is medium sized and has it every way. I think he will make in or about 15,000 guineas. At that price he must represent good potential value. As you can see, it is a truly classic pedigree on both sides. I should be very grateful if you cable me as soon as possible as if you don’t want him, we would like to get somebody else to buy him to put into training with the O’Briens. I hope it will be you, as I would like to imagine you leading in a Derby winner at Epsom.

An extract from a letter from Tom Cooper to Raymond Guest on September 5th, 1960. The Never Say Die colt in question would go on to be Larkspur, and win the 1962 Derby.

RG: You met Tom at the Carlow Hunt Ball?

VC: Yes I met him there and he followed it up. Simple as that. We were married in about six months.

RG: So had Tom established BBA Ireland at that stage, or what stage was it at?

VC: No it was Tim Vigors and company. Tom was working at Goffs. Tim Vigors was the manager there and Philip Myerscough’s father was the chairman. Tom and Tim decided they wanted to set up their own company and it was called Tim Vigors and Co. Anyway to make a long story short, Tim abandoned the ship as such and Tom was left carrying the can. We were just married at this stage. It was a tough old time because wages had to be paid and the bank wasn’t inclined to support an impoverished company that had expectations to buy a Derby winner or something else. We survived because Tom and Noel O’Callaghan, who came in to work with Tom and ended up being the managing director, made a deal with BBA England and that’s how it became BBA Ireland.

RG: It was quite an uncertain, stressful period then I’m sure?

VC: It was. I had four children in six years. Tom would never borrow any money from anybody else - that was one of his big things.

RG: Tell me about Tom.

VC: He was an extraordinary man. He never had a row with me. He never had a row with the children. He never had a row with anybody. He had a great association with Dan Moore, Vincent O’Brien, Fulke Walwyn, Nick Gazelee, Tim Forster and so many people in America. I remember him bring the stallion Tulyar to Claiborne Farm and a great friendship developed between him and Dell Hancock. Looking back on it now, it is rather annoying that he did die. He had so much more to offer. They stopped the sale in Keeneland for his funeral for an hour. Dell, Helen Alexander and Shirley Taylor flew over from America especially. It was terribly moving. They had become very good friends. He was a very special person and I’m quite happy to say that. And his children are too, which is nice. They all went into the business of racing and they haven’t done too badly.

RG: What was it like travelling to America?

VC: We were privileged to be able to go around the various farms and see the yearlings, before the catalogue had come out. We had some lovely dinners! We went for six years or so. Vincent O’Brien asked Tom to pre-view the yearlings in May. The sale was in July. Then Tom would give Vincent the feedback and he’d go back in July and buy a few horses. Some were duds and some were quite good.

RG: A fair few were good. Five Derby winners and two Grand National winners. Can you put your finger on what Tom had when it came to buying horses?

VC: I don’t know. It was a complete natural instinct. He never trotted a horse, never. He said if they can walk correctly, they will gallop correctly. He spent a lot of time looking at horses. The other thing that was amazing about him was that he never forgot a person. I remember we were in South Africa and on a farm and there was a lad leading up to whatever horse we were looking at and Tom went over to him and said ‘Gosh, it’s good to see you, what landed you here.’ After a long conversation he came back and told me ‘that fellow led out several yearlings at the Keeneland sales three years ago for me.’ He just had a natural instinct for horses and for people. Extraordinary, a gift, a good photographic memory.

RG: It must have been difficult when he passed away?

VC: It was, but luckily the children were all grown up. They weren’t necessarily established but they were all grown up so that was very very fortunate. I was 55 and I suppose I thought, what do you do? You either sit at home and feel sorry for yourself or get out and find things to do.

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“The predominantly male world of Ireland’s racing hierarchy must have seemed somewhat intimidating at first, but having been one of the first women to link up with the show-jumpers of the Irish Army on international teams in the 1950s, it was not an entirely novel state of affairs for Mrs Cooper.”

Alan Sweetman, Racing Post, April 1999

RG: So when did you first start getting into the governance level of racing?

VC: Tom died in 1990 and at the end of that year Joe Walsh, who was Minister for Agriculture at the time, rang me and asked if I would consider joining the Racing Board, which was the levy board at the time. I thought it was a joke, but I followed it up and I was there for the last year of the Racing Board. It then became the Irish Horseracing Authority and then Horse Racing Ireland. I was eventually in HRI representing National Hunt racing for the Turf Club. From then on, I was on lots of committees and enjoyed them all - the Curragh committee, the licensing committee and so on.

RG: You were one of the first women to become a member of the Turf Club?

VC: The first one I think was Sonia Rogers, the second one was Joan Moore, Arthur’s mother, and I was the third one. It was an honour but I think people often forget that we stewards do the work voluntarily.

RG: It is unique. I guess the question is what is the real attraction to it?

VC: Because one thought it was an honour to be asked and it was something that interested me. You had to learn about everything. Nowadays the stewards are trained but we got no training at all. The first day of stewarding I did, I didn’t even know where the weigh room was. It was so interesting. As far as I was concerned I was willing to give up a lot of things for it because you left the house, went to the races and came home and that was it. It’s still much the same.

RG: It must have changed somewhat down the years?

VC: Oh, it’s very much the same. There’s three or four voluntary stewards, then the stipendiary stewards. We have the rule book and we have to bide by the rule book but you also had to have a lot of common sense. I suppose the big thing that came in was television, that changed things a lot.

RG: Some people think the stewarding system as it is now is past it’s sell-by date, not fit for purpose. What do you think?

VC: Well there’s people who think there should be a big satellite in the sky and you don’t need stewards at all. Stewards are very important for issues that happen on the track outside of the seven or eight races - vet issues, managerial issues...

RG: What do you think about the future of racing in general?

VC: I’m afraid there’s an awful lot of do-gooders who think racing is cruel. It’s very few people but they are there and you have to cope with them. I think racing is an amazing industry because the amount of people that make money out of it is very small, very small.

RG: That is always a great point.

VC: It’s a pure passion that keeps people there. The knockers have things to knock about it but the sport will rise above it. That’s how I look at it. That’s how I want it to happen. Of course every industry changes and so will racing. Just look at the breeze-up guys now in flat racing.

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On Christmas day, whatever year it was, we finished lunch and everybody went out to the front of the house and Alice, my granddaughter, was leading around an absolutely scruffy looking animal with long hair, not clipped or anything else. I said to her, ‘gosh, you’ve got a new pony, how lovely?’ and then suddenly I looked at the horse again, and realised, ‘It’s Opera Hat!’

Valerie Cooper speaking to Robert Hall, in an interview commissioned by Naas racecourse.

RG: How big a part in your life was Opera Hat?

VC: Huge. Tom bought her in 1989, not long before he died. He bought two yearlings, one gelding and this small raggedy-looking pony of a thing that was dark brown, no markings. He paid 3,000 pounds for her and decided John Fowler would train the filly and Arthur Moore would train the gelding. The gelding was absolutely useless, couldn’t get out of his own way, but the filly turned out to be quite good. She carried us through the next seven years with 15 wins, until we sold her as an 11-year-old.

RG: You didn’t want to sell her?

VC: We got a lot of money for her. I cried. I said to the family we can’t sell her. They said, ‘Well mum if she died you wouldn’t either have the horse or the money’ so we took the money. She was a disaster as a broodmare and then next thing she arrived back one Christmas, Patrick bought her back for me. Chich Fowler thought she should go to Robin Des Champs and that’s what we did and Woodland Opera appeared. I’ve had a lovely time with both.

RG: And you still have relations now?

VC: We have two fillies now, both by Elusive Pimpernel, a four-year-old and a three-year-old and we have a mare Doyenna, who is a six-year-old, all relations. The four-year-old is gorgeous. She is called Fairyland Opera. We were hoping to get a run into her by the end of this year but the ground is horrible. We’ve waited this long we might as well wait a bit longer. They’re all with Lorna (Fowler) and Diana has come on board as a partner with me now, which is great.

RG: I have to ask you about your children, I’m sure you’re very proud of what they’ve done in the industry?

VC: Very proud. Alan has been working for the Niarchos Family since Philip Payne-Gallwey head hunted him from Goffs. He’s been there 38 years. Patrick came back to join up with BBA Ireland which was very special. Diana has been wonderful to me. She works for Sheikh Mohammed’s equine charities worldwide and loves it. Jonathan was a journalist. He married the most lovely girl Zoe. They lived in London and had two children aged two and three months, and one day, he dropped dead just like that. It was very sad. She’s been a wonderful mother. One of his lads has just finished in Manchester University and one is in York University now. They’re great lads. I’ve five grandchildren altogether. One of Patrick’s, Sean, completed the Irish National Stud course and is on the Godolphin Flying Start now.

RG: Robert Hall finished up his interview with you by asking you what was the secret to a happy life and you said integrity, so perhaps you can elaborate a bit more on that.

VC: You can’t live your life without it. I couldn’t and Tom certainly couldn’t and I’d like to think the children couldn’t either. They’re very strong. You have to have it in my book. You stick by your principles and hope that you have good principles. I think the two biggest things of all our lives is to respect people and have integrity and if you can do both, you won’t be losing too much.