When did you first get involved with

thoroughbreds?

I suppose it’s going back 30 years near enough to before I got married. I farm up over Old Leighlin in Co Carlow and my father-in-law, Matt Brady, was a guard in Borris. He had a few ponies, and he always wanted a thoroughbred, so he went up to the sales at Goffs and he bought a mare called Rievaulx Abbey. Her foal was sold the same day as her, and he turned out to be Deep Idol, who won the Irish Champion Hurdle. You have to be a bit lucky in this life, I suppose. When Deep Idol won his bumper first time out, John Magnier actually tried to buy Rievaulx Abbey but Matt wouldn’t sell her! He was breeding then for years and selling on his foals. He had one mare that he couldn’t sell because she was down in the pasterns behind and she turned out to be Colleen Donn. She bred Macgeorge and Chief Dan George, and six winners after that.

There was another mare that he brought to the sales but couldn’t sell, so I told him if he was stuck she could stay with me as we had an old mare at the time. She ended up breeding six or seven winners with us, so that’s how I got started with thoroughbreds.

Do you mainly breed to sell?

We try to sell them as foals if we can, anything that we can’t sell as foals we’d try to sell as yearlings, two or three-year-olds. We wouldn’t have the facilities for turning out three-year-olds as I do it all on my own here.

We had four foals this year but none of them are going to sales. We probably won’t have any next year because we couldn’t get our mares in foal, it’s been hard this year for some reason. I have mares here that would never have any trouble going in foal but they had to be covered two or three times this year and still no luck.

What did you think of Colleen Danu’s win at Gowran, and what are your plans going forward?

Looking at the race, I didn’t think she ran as well until I saw the video afterwards. She missed the last jump, but that was the only one she really missed. She was nearly on the bridle coming down to the last and won it more snugly than I thought she would. I was very happy with the way she ran.

We would have been under pressure, money-wise, but my sister Mary, who lives in Switzerland, my wife Brónagh, and my daughter Eibhe came on board for the Relwal Syndicate. We got some kick out of the winner on Saturday, it was our first one!

We’ve been very lucky, we bred Absolute Notions the year before last. With Colleen Danu, we wouldn’t have been able to afford to go racing really as such, but after Absolute Notions winning, we said we’d give it a go.

Our dream was to have a winning mare to breed out of. All of our mares here are unraced because we simply wouldn’t have had the money to put into them.

We’ll stay going with her and let her tell us the story. She’s gone up 6lb from that race, and she’ll probably go to a mares’ handicap next month, but we’ll let her tell us what she’s capable of. Looking at her form back over the last year, she ran in some decent races, finishing behind very good horses, and in front of some good horses. I would hope that she would have more ability, but it’s hard to win out there, it’s a tough game.

I couldn’t praise Patrick [Foley, trainer] high enough. She’s not the easiest mare in the world to deal with. She has her quirks, and she gets a little fussy when things are going on, she wants to be in the middle of everything. Before the race in Gowran, Patrick was leading her for an hour or more beforehand.

It must be fulfilling to see your foals win.

From the foaling down stage, I’m doing it all myself, so she would have been hands-on from the word go. I know every little quirk and every little detail in her, and she has shown her own little personality with the way she handles things, so it’s very satisfying to see that. It’s great to have achieved something like that. She’s not a Grade 1 winner but it’s like a Grade 1 to us.

Is there anything that could be improved in the breeding and racing industry?

I think the breeders should get more recognition for what they do, you don’t get any horses out there without the breeder. We should get compensation when our horses win. I find that everybody in this game has their hand out before you get anything back. Even when you go to the sales, you sell a horse and you’re on a high and all of a sudden there’s about five hands waiting before you come home.

Even with the small races, if the breeder got a little bit more out of it, it could be more incentive to breed good horses. It’s tough going, there’s big days like Cheltenham for the big boys and big guns, but they wouldn’t be there without the small breeder in Ireland or England. If that nice horse goes on and wins for some big trainer, it would be nice to get a percentage back out of it.

I’m not saying a big percentage, just a recognition of breeding that winner. The running costs are so high. If you’re lucky enough to get a winner early, and you do get a nice pedigree, or you breed a few winners, it will keep you going and you get to the next sales. It’s really from sale to sale that you’re living off.