THE Sundowners Partnership were among the most ecstatic winning owners at the Cheltenham Festival following the success of Wodhooh in the Grade 1 Close Brothers’ Mares’ Hurdle, albeit in a quiet, understated way which was underpinned by an awe verging on disbelief about what had just happened to them.
The reaction of the nine members of the partnership, which is headed by the Limerick man, Ian Murphy, and consists of his sister, Janet Costello, along with Shane Grant, Paul Leonard, Paul Palmer, Gary Owens, Cian Foley, Kieran McManus and Brian O’Leary, mirrored that of the man who had found the six-year-old Le Havre mare for them, Ted Durcan.
A 53-year-old native of Co Mayo, Durcan is best known for his exploits in the saddle under the summer code, where he overcame a late start and a big fall-out with his longtime boss, Jim Bolger, to forge a fine career for himself both in Britain, where he won two classics, and the UAE, where he was champion jockey on no less than seven occasions.
Less than nine years on from Durcan hanging up his boots, he was there in the background, glowing with happiness. Not for himself, or his burgeoning business, Ted Durcan Bloodstock (TDB), but for the Sundowners (‘real enthusiasts, who appreciated the enormity of the moment having owned horses at all levels’) and in particular for Murphy, ‘the best man in the world to deal with’.
Durcan reveals: “I was stood there in the paddock trying to encourage Ian to go over and help lead Wodhooh into the winner’s enclosure, but he simply wouldn’t. He’s so self-effacing, the most unassuming guy, a lovely fella.”
Those last words could be used to describe Durcan too. Following a quick, celebratory drink with his clients, he and wife Sue were back in the car to their home in Newmarket. “I woke up the next morning lovely and fresh and ready to ride work for William Haggas,” he reports.
Festival memories
The acquisition of Wodhooh for a jumping career is something of an outlier for TDB, which mainly trades in flat horses. Which is not to say that the magnitude of having a winner at the Prestbury Park extravaganza is lost on Durcan, far from it.
“My parents [the Westport-based solicitor, Tom Durcan, and his wife, Jill,] used to go over for the Festival every year, out on the Sunday, to Stratford on the Monday, and back on the Friday,” he reveals.
“My father wasn’t a holiday man, he wouldn’t last two hours lying on a beach, but he was a racing nut and Cheltenham was their thing. I was left behind with my grandmother but we were allowed to watch it, so I remember some of the great horses of that era like Wayward Lad and Bobsline.”
Back to Wodhooh and how she was recruited. In a phone call from his former weighing room colleague, Fran Berry, Durcan was informed that Ian Murphy was looking for a fun horse, in the £25,000 to £30,000 price bracket, to share with a couple of friends.
“I was riding work for Sir Michael Stoute [Wodhooh’s trainer] at the time and became aware that Al Shaqab were intending to send her to the July sales. She was only rated 72 but was the most straightforward filly, with an attitude to die for. Gary Corney, one of Geoff Wragg’s best old work riders, used to ride her every day despite not being the youngest, which proves how easy she was.
“The problem was that she was a lovely, scopey model and people love to buy Sir Michael’s because they know that everything will have been done the right way. So I rung Ian and said that she was a must-have but that he’d likely have to up the ante if he wanted to get her.
“Ian rallied the troops but, even then, we were on fumes when her price reached £50,000. That was probably my last bid for Ian although, as she was the nap of the sale, I would probably have gone a bit further and tried to find someone else to have her.
Good temperament
“She was only a shell of a filly and Le Havres handle easy ground and stay extremely well. On top of that you’ve got her temperament – in the pre-parade ring and the paddock she’s always horizontal. She won’t overrace and doesn’t need cover, she does idle a bit when she hits the front but that’s a good thing as it will make her last.
“One other thing about her, which I’ve seen at first hand with a lot of excellent horses in the past, is that she doesn’t do a tap in the mornings. She shows nothing and never has. Gordon [Elliott] says that he has to take her away to Fairyhouse or Navan every now and then to wake her up and get her to stretch her legs.
“Did anyone think when we bought her that she might go on to do what she has done? No. I think that this year was even better than last. Then we were in a field of 24 [in the County Hurdle] and everyone was hoping for the best but expecting the worst, thinking if she won that we were in bonus territory for the rest of our lives.
“Since then, the owners have just been having a blast. In the Mares’ Hurdle we all believed in our heart of hearts that she was the best horse in the race, but we’ve seen what can happen to the likes of State Man. For Wodhooh to win a Grade 1, that’s huge.
“What makes it extra special is that she is owned by a bunch of like-minded friends. Noone interferes with Gordon, and he has placed her so smartly.
Ever the gentleman, Durcan has not given a thought to annoying the Master of Cullentra himself in the few days since Cheltenham, so future plans are unclear. A return to Liverpool to bid to go one better than last year in the two-and-a-half-mile Aintree Hurdle on April 9th would appear to be her most logical next assignment.
“We left Aintree on a high last season [although Wodhooh lost her unbeaten record], she seemed to act well there and even made Lossiemouth pull out a few stops on what was her first start in open company,” Durcan muses.
End of an era
In late 2017 Durcan, wary that ‘it’s very easy to outstay your welcome’, chose to put an end to his riding career. After giving plenty of thought to becoming a trainer (he went through the rigmarole of gaining all the necessary BHA credentials), he plumped for bloodstock agency.
When we meet in his beautifully furnished home in Newmarket, I find a contented man. Still buoyed by Wodhooh’s triumph a few days earlier, relishing his role as a ‘four or five days per week, fair-weather work rider’ for Haggas, invigorated by the challenge of continuing to develop TDB and excited for the flat season ahead.
Asked how he feels his second career is going, he replies: “I’m over the moon. Every year my client base is growing, last year on the track we enjoyed some excellent results.
“I work with a whole array of trainers, in particular Richard Hughes, Jim Goldie and Sheila Lavery, and I get a huge buzz every time that an inexpensive horse of mine wins any race, however small, that means a lot to its owners.”
While suggesting that his days in the saddle provide a solid grounding, he doesn’t pretend to have any magic ingredient to give him an edge over other agents. “I simply work my socks off at each and every sale, put in as much homework as possible and always do the best for my clients,” he says.
The self-promotion, networking and socialising with clients which is such a key part of the business does not come easy to him. “I don’t hustle in the way that I should and I’ve found that I simply can’t go out and prostitute myself, but I’ve always got the hard work done to the best of my abilities,” he admits.
He makes a point to credit Sue for her role in the development of the business. “Nothing would be possible without her,” he stresses. “The amount of admin generated is huge, particularly in the very busy autumn sales season when I’m away a lot, and I simply can’t manage it, so I’m afraid that I dump it on her.”
Asked to name an underrated stallion worth following, he plumps for Kildangan Stud’s Ghaiyyath. He also mentions one of his progeny when prompted to pick out the TDB graduates he is most looking forward to watching in the coming weeks.
“Rose Ghaiyyath, a filly who Richard Hughes and I bought at the Arqana Breeze-Up (for €110,000) and won a valuable Deauville sales race on her debut before finishing fourth in a May Hill Stakes which is working out incredibly well, is on the classic trail.
“More immediately, this Sunday could see the reappearance of Shaool, a Belardo filly I bought off Co Wexford trainer Pat O’Rourke for very modest money rated 74. She went to Johnny Murtagh and ended the year winning the Listed Trigo Stakes by six lengths, rated 108.
“She must have the word ‘soft’ in the going description but I think that Johnny has her ready to run in the Devoy Stakes at Naas.
“A third filly that I’m excited about is Nyra. She was placed in last year’s German Oaks and I bought her with David Lanigan and Joseph O’Brien at the Arqana Mares Sale in December for Scott Heider [for €875,000].”
The early years
Never less than completely engaged throughout the interview, Durcan becomes particularly animated when talking about the early stages of his riding career and the assistance he received from the likes of Gerry Stack, Paddy Prendergast and Jim Bolger.
“I was never thinking about a riding career at all, it was an afterthought,” he reveals. “I wasn’t very focused at boarding school [Clongowes Wood College in Co Kildare] and during term time often used to get a lift from a local farmer to one of the nearby racecourses.
“My uncle got me a holiday job with Gerry and Bernie Stack, two top class horse people who ran a small National Hunt yard on the Curragh. It was Gerry who thought that I needed to go and spend some time at Coolcullen with Mr Bolger.
“I used to go to Coolcullen when I was still as school, and then did another six years full-time there, not even riding my first winner until I was 19. Christy Roche was the stable jockey at the time and other employees included Willie Supple, Seamie Heffernan, A.P. McCoy and Paul Carberry, not to mention Aidan O’Brien.
“It was a very hard place, A.P. and I still talk about it now, life there was no bed of roses. You had to wear a shirt, have your hair short, no earrings, and nobody ever dreamt of phoning in sick.
“But it was the best place to learn and, no matter how many other riders he had there, he always gave the young lads a chance as long as they worked hard.
“Then [in 1996] Jim and I had a disagreement which led to the Turf Club getting involved and him stopping me from riding. I ended up having to hand in my notice even though Jim wouldn’t let me go.
“I was only able to get my career back up and running due to the kindness of Paddy Prendergast, who then insisted that I go over to England and make a fresh start with Jack Berry.”
The impasse with Bolger was to last almost a decade with not a word spoken between the pair until, in a crowded hotel bar in Hong Kong, they found themselves nose-to-nose and Durcan thrust out his hand in reconciliation.
Coaching the next generation
During nearly two hours of enjoyable conversation, Durcan comes across as a highly decent, hard-working person, one who remains forever grateful to the people who gave him a leg-up in his younger days. On the flip side of that coin, he clearly takes the trust that people place in him as an agent incredibly seriously, and speaks powerfully about the depth of his anguish when a horse he has bought does not go on to be successful.
Self-deprecating and self-critical, almost painfully so on occasions, he is keen to help others just as he was helped himself, and we end our chat discussing his role as a BHA jockey coach.
“I love it,” he beams. “I have eight or 10 people on my books at any one time, at the moment those include Kaiya Fraser, Taryn Langley and Toby Moore. Aged 14 or 15 and from the middle of London, Kaiya had never even sat on a horse, so he has done incredibly well to now be riding pretty much 50 winners per season.”
“I spend a lot of time with them at Peter O’Sullevan House [the Newmarket base of the Injured Jockeys Fund] over the winter months, the amenities there are amazing, and I try and get them up on the simulator as much as I can. Some of these young guys buy into me but some of them don’t, just as some of the trainers buy into the system.”
“Stuart Williams, for instance, always invests time, energy and money into his apprentices. This is the same Stuart Williams who made Marco Ghiani into Champion apprentice a couple of years ago. And yet, when he advertised for a newcapprentice recently, he got only one application. One!”
Racing may have moved on from the Jim Bolger school of hard knocks that so moulded Durcan, and rightly so. But sometimes you cannot help those who won’t help themselves.