1985

FORMER Tipperary trainer Adrian Maxwell, having a busman’s holiday in Ireland this week, can’t understand how trainers in this country keep going. Now training in the USA, Maxwell says: “I’d love to come back to Ireland but I don’t know how I could afford to. There are just too many horses and not enough prize money. Ireland has too much racing and not enough people.”

Englishman Maxwell spent several years training at South Lodge, near Carrick-On-Suir, at the old Phonsie O’Brien establishment. Although he never had a lot of luck here, he still managed to turn out a good number of winners. He sent Orchestration over to win at Royal Ascot, while Meladon and Willie Wumpkins won at the Cheltenham Festival. In Ireland his biggest winner was Billycan in the 1977 Irish National.

He says that money forced him out after years of bad luck with the virus. He spends his winter training at Hialeah in Florida, and his summer is divided between Belmont Park in New York City and Saratoga in upstate New York. Maxwell has done well in the USA, despite having a much smaller string than here. With about 25 horses last year he won $1 million and he has won 40 races since 1982. His biggest winner has been Persian Tiara, an Irish-bred filly who has won $630,000.

He says it is no easier to win in the USA than at home. “I don’t think there’s much difference in the quality of racing anywhere. It’s as hard to get a bad horse to win a bad race in the states as here, and it’s the same with a good horse.”