BILLY Boyers, retired trainer from Rosses Point in Co Sligo, passed away during the running of the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe last Sunday. As his friend Michael McElhone observed: “He hadn’t jumped the queue”.

Billy was 93, having retired some 30 years ago, moving to the Lower Rosses with Jill, his wife for some 74 years. They had met at a Donkey Derby, where Jill had ridden the winner.

At the ‘celebration’ of Billy’s life on Tuesday, it was disclosed that among his treasured possessions was a photograph of Winston Churchill with his top-class winner Colonist II, trained in Epsom by Walter Nightingall. Billy had looked after Colonist II, while in the trainer’s employment.

That was to have bittersweet consequences years later, when Mr J.W. Boyers rode a winner at his beloved Sligo racecourse. A connection of the runner-up – who shall remain nameless – promptly lodged an objection, on the basis that J.W. Boyers, by virtue of having been a paid employee in a racing stable, was thereby not eligible for an amateur rider’s licence. Billy’s ‘winner’ was disqualified.

On a happier note, J.W. Boyers enjoyed his first training success, as a permit holder, when his own Valley Parade won the Mountain Bay Handicap Dundalk in 1969. Ridden by Vivian Kennedy, the winner was returned at 100/6, an attractive price for one who always liked a little wager.

It got better when Valley Parade and Vivian pulled off a double at Billy’s local two-day meeting the following year. The lucrative sale of Valley Parade saw Billy take out a full licence in 1971, training his first ‘outside’ winner when Seashine returned to form at Sligo, owned by Owen Carty and ridden by John Harty.

Cheltenham Festival Centenary records Billy’s arrival on the bigger stage, in 1977. “Even the impartial Irish were bemused. What did people mean calling Kilcoleman another Irish winner?

“Of course, those who knew their racing inside out were quick to explain that Kilcoleman was trained on the strand at Rosses Point by J.W. Boyers for his principal patron, cattle dealer Paul Clarke. Kilcoleman was a first overseas runner for either owner or trainer. The latter admitted that, had he appreciated just how heavy that going was to be, he would have kept Kilcoleman in his seaside stable.”

Weeks later, owner and trainer followed up with Artistic Prince, successful in the featured John Jameson Cup at Punchestown in the hands of Ferdie Murphy, who had succeeded Enda Bolger as Billy’s right-hand man. Both Enda and the late Ferdie put their time in Rosses Point to good use in becoming successful trainers in their own right.

In 1980, Billy Boyers brought off probably his supreme training triumph, when sending out the chronically unsound Sir Barry (T.J. Ryan) to win the Galway Plate for Paul Clarke.

Unable to gallop the horse on the strand, Billy resorted to rowing out to a nearby island every day, with Sir Barry in tow. His success prompted a request three years later to accommodate Poyntz Pass and his trainer in the attempt to emulate Billy’s success in Ballybrit. That summer was so hot that the horses were sweating in their stables in the midlands.

Billy could not have been more helpful, giving Poyntz Pass a box and quartering his trainer in Billy’s adjacent B&B, which also happened to be Billy’s local.

Try as he did, Poyntz Pass could finish no closer than fifth in the Plate that year. He was later exonerated, when the distance of the race was found to be significantly longer than P.P. specialised at. He made amends at Punchestown and Fairyhouse. It was a memorable experience, Billy proving an ideal drinking companion.

And now he is gone, slipping away while surrounded by his beloved Jill and their three daughters, who had gathered around him from all ends of the earth on learning the prognosis.

G.W.