OUR parents always told us, only buy a horse if you are willing to race it if you can’t or don’t sell it. Their point being ‘don’t buy something because it’s good value or cheap, buy it because it’s the best.’ If you are not willing to race it, why should you expect someone else to buy it off you?”

The words of David O’Callaghan, manager of Yeomanstown Stud outside Naas. Not the usual advice you’d expect from your mother and father but Gay and Annette O’Callaghan didn’t raise any fools.