WITH Amo Racing having decided to expand operations both here and in the US, it was important for us to get an early winner on the board.

Our initial runner in their silks, Gorgeous Star, finished third on her stable debut at the beginning of this month, while Forceful Speed was only just denied at the Curragh on Saturday.

Fortunately, we only had to wait just over 24 hours, before Saliteh credited us with our first success for the owners at Naas on Sunday.

My family always kept a couple of work horses at home when I was young and I learned to ride on those. In my early teens, I did a bit of hunting before progressing to show jumping and eventing.

From as far back as I can remember, I always had an interest in horse racing, watching it on television and going to our local Kilbeggan meeting. After finishing in school, I went to work on the family farm, which mainly consisted of suckler cows.

Sport horse

In time, I started to buy and sell the odd sport horse as a hobby but fell into thoroughbreds more or less by accident. A friend of mine, James Robinson had bred a filly and asked me to get involved with him.

I ended up training the mare, later named First Battle, to win her point-to-point under Gordon Elliott. She went on to breed some very smart horses including Grade 1 winner Apache Stronghold.

Shortly after First Battle won her point-to-point, I took out a restricted licence so I could run a few under rules. It was only ever meant to be a hobby, with the farm the main source of income. However, within a few years, it really took off with outside owners coming to ask me to train for them.

First winner

In 2008, I trained my first winner on the racecourse, Leney Dow Jones - rather appropriately at Kilbeggan. Over the next couple of years, I mixed the farming with the training, until 2010, when I took the decision to switch from sucklers to dry stock, so that I could devote more attention to the horses.

From then, until 2016, I sent out some nice winners over jumps including the likes of Cass Bligh, Tilly Ann, Loughnagall and Fairymount Lad. I had my first exposure to flat horses just over six years ago, when Brazilian Robson Aguiar and his brother-in-law, Jose, started riding out for me.

They encouraged me to take out a dual licence so that I could run horses under both codes. In October 2016, I trained my first flat winner, Shes Ranger, whom Robson partnered to success at Dundalk. The flat string grew from there but I have always retained a great love for National Hunt racing and sent out winners such as Gold Speed, Bilbo Bagins and She’s Commanche in recent seasons.

Breezers

I bought my own breezers to run on the track and the connection with Robson Aguiar has been a constant throughout the last six years. During that time, Robson has worked hard to make a name for himself as one of the most respected breeze-up consignors.

Two years ago, The Lir Jet, a horse he pinhooked for just £8k went on to win the Norfolk Stakes for Qatar Racing. With numerous other successes, Robson attracted the attention of Amo Racing, one of the new emerging owners in the sport.

As well as buying stock for Amo Racing at the sales, Robson has also started to pre-train their horses. It was through this connection that I was added to the owner’s band of trainers for 2022.

First time

With horses in training here in Ireland for the first time, Amo Racing very kindly sent me seven; three of which are juveniles.

One of those, Forceful Speed, had been working very well prior to his racecourse debut on Saturday, so we full expected him to go close. It was nice to see him fulfil the potential we know he possesses, only going down by a head in the opening juvenile race of the year. Hopefully he will have learned from the experience and go one better on his next start.

Having been on the wrong end of a head result on Saturday, it was great to see Saliteh prevail by that same margin a day later.

Placed on a couple of starts for Richard Hannon last season, the daughter of Ardad stayed on well to get up close home under Colin Keane.

We have a nice string of horses for the season ahead; a mix of point-to-pointers, National Hunt and flat horses. All 23 boxes are currently full but as ever, we will always find the room for a nice horse.

Adrian Murray was in conversation with John O’Riordan