ABOUT halfway between Paulstown and Gowran in Co Kilkenny “where the road widens out and it’s nice and straight” is where Paul Hennessy lives with his wife Susan and where they raised their five girls and one boy.

A stalwart of the greyhound circuit for 40 years with, a two-time winner of the English greyhound Derby and a winner of the Irish greyhound Derby and three-time winner of the Scottish greyhound Derby, Hennessy always kept a mare about the place. Spare The Air was the only horse in Hennessy’s yard when Heaven Help Us was foaled and she has proved by far the best of the dam’s four offspring.

And the subsequent progeny had something about her from foaling and a laid-back nature which has stood her in good stead.

Up to the yard to see this special homebred and seven or eight heads look out of the boxes in the barn, with the radio playing in the background and chickens picking at the barn floor.

Hennessy still trains greyhounds but it was last year’s heroine Heaven Help Us at Cheltenham who propelled Hennessy, who would have only two or three horses in training, to national and international notice after she blitzed home under claimer Richie Condon to win by nine lengths at 33/1.

And that performance was subsequently recognised when the trainer won the 2021 HRI National Hunt Achievement Award.

An extraordinarily youthful looking “61 and a half”, born in 1960, what is his secret?

“My wife Susan tells me it’s because she takes all the stress out of my life, yeah right!” He rolled his eyes. “We pushed it hard (greyhounds racing). And it’s a wonderful game now that they have the basics done right.

“But then again to have a second shot then with this, for her to come along was just … you know, it’s all about her that’s being honest with you. And she’s very easy to like.”

Hennessy leads out his rugged-up pride and joy. She politely sniffs but declines the proffered apples - “don’t be offended now” - says her besotted trainer as he relives the scarcely comprehendible scenes from Cheltenham a year ago.

“Ah look, it was amazing and they did a super, super job. No matter what it was, everything was just right, everyone behaved themselves as well too now, you know. Good lads, and we all got on with what we had to do. We all stood up in the Dawn Run Stand and no matter whose horse came in we all went out and gave them a round of applause, you know.”

Even the English horses got a cheer from the watching Irish.

“Yeah, yeah they did because we were that far in front of them,” Hennessy grinned. “It would have been different had they been closer. We were having a great time, no harm to give them an oul cheer. And it added to it. It’s hard to imagine it ever happened that’s the truth.”

The nerves must have kicked in big time before the off?

“No, just give it a go, that’s all we’ve ever done. Obviously you would be nervous just before a race or any race, you wouldn’t be doing it if you weren’t. At that level, like, it’s huge. Richie (Condon) executed the plan to a T. He was brilliant on her. It was important to jump off. I said ‘Richie don’t get caught behind a heap of these horses’ because, you know, at that level you just have to take a chance and move on.

“Nobody could have done better. For a young fella, what amazed me about him was that there was two false starts and Richie was in the firing line every time.”

It must have been emotional being given a guard of honour when leading in the mare.

“It was wonderful. I walked in along and like Willie Mullins and Rachel Blackmore, Jack Kennedy, Emmet Mullins, who would be my godchild - George’s son - and I lost track of all the other people on it, but when I saw them people lining up I just couldn’t believe what was going on.”

A lot can depend on the temperament of a racemare – what is Heaven like?

“It’s a pleasure to handle an animal like her. You know like, you don’t even need a lead on her, she’ll stand beside me down there. Now if she knew you were looking, she would go down the yard with the tail in the air. And she’d look back at you laughing at you as much to say I’m after getting away on you.”

Does she get worked up?

“No, not at all, no, no, you could load her there in the box and off she’ll go for a spin, she loves it. And the only time she’ll give you hell is when you are going parading her. She’s as quiet as a mouse tacking her up and the whole lot and when you walk her then down into the parade ring. But Niall (Prendergast who was leading up at Cheltenham), she marched him around for a lap and I saw him at one stage actually having to circle her. They had to do a Ballydoyle on her, one each side,” he said with a laugh.

“The level she’s gone to, there’s a lot of, what would you call it, attention on her now that you just hope that when she goes out and runs she comes back standing on all fours. After that we are way into bonus country with her. Way beyond anything, way beyond.”

Hennessy took the decision to run Heaven Help Us in the Grade 1 Irish Champion Hurdle March at the Dublin Racing Festival up against the unbeaten champion Honeysuckle. Why go that route before Cheltenham and the Grade 1 Close Brothers Mares’ Hurdle?

“I just think that she might not get as hard a race in the Champion Hurdle which may sound stupid and maybe it is stupid. Carrying nearly 12 stone in a mares’ handicap, Jaysus I think it’s a big ask for her. Now I know that’s her rating and that’s where she’s at, and where she should be. If there’s six or seven runners in it she’ll beat on there and do her own thing. But in the other race with the hurly-burly and carrying top weight … It may not help her going forward to the next outing which is Cheltenham.”

Heaven Help Us finished fifth of five having raced prominently in the early stages.“She’s grand,” confirmed Hennessy on the following Monday. “It was a good blowout and Danny was not too hard on her once her chance was gone. We were delighted to be part of an historic day for Honeysuckle. On to the Mares’ Hurdle at Cheltenham

“I want to have another go at it. But there’s a whole load of ways of looking at things, lads at this game all their lives the likes of Willie (Mullins) and Gordon Elliot, they were expected to get it right.

“If we get it wrong it doesn’t matter, and John Turner (owner) is the one that says there’s no problem, because most of the things we’ve done with her have just stumbled from one race to another and we’ve had a great time.”

Heaven Help Us is owned by John Turner, who lives in Cirencester, not too far from Cheltenham, and who has a long association with Hennessy as his greyhound trainer. “We had an English Derby winner together, Jaytee Jet, with the dogs and an Irish Oaks winner and he keeps telling me I haven’t won the Irish Derby for him yet! Not all easy, he’s a hard task master. But it’s all good fun,” he said, laughing.

The way the mare has been campaigned was partly dictated by where her owner is based.

“We said we’d bring her over for that maiden hurdle (at Cheltenham in October 2019). It went on from there then, we ran her in the Supreme Novices’, sure how mad is that, like? But imagine having the crack? She ran a cracker, seventh to Shishkin after getting bumped and baulked a few times.

“The plan was to bring give her the experience of Cheltenham and then she was coming back and going to go to Willie’s (Mullins) for her jumping career because we had trained her for the hurdles. But when she won the maiden hurdle he said to me: ‘You may hold onto her yourself and train her away.’ That’s the truth.”

Were you amazed when he said that?

“I was, I was stunned, it never dawned on me because he just said to me, ‘are you going to train her for the jumping or will we give her to Willie?’ He asked me about horses before and I said to him there’s only one way - at the level he wants to be in horses - and that is Willie trains them. And that’s the way it should be, but like he just left her here, he has maybe three others or whatever with Willie at the moment.

“It’s great that he owned her because I wouldn’t have dared doing some of the things that she has been doing if I owned her myself. No, no, I wouldn’t have been that brave or foolish, whichever word you want to use. Or as ambitious, should I say.”

Will Heaven Help Us progress to a chasing career?

“She’s won a chase but she didn’t like it. She got beaten first time out in Sligo in a mares’ chase and then she went and won a mares’ chase in Fairyhouse but her form got, I thought anyway, progressively worse and we were in Cork one day and I said to Danny (Mullins) after a chase, ‘Danny, I don’t think she likes the fences we’ll go back to jumping the hurdles and we did, we switched her back to hurdles. And we went to Leopardstown for Paddy Mullins’ memorial race and she won in February last year.”

Who do you have helping out at home?

“Niall Prendergast and Justin Hannafin. Two great chaps, yeah, Niall is a conditional jockey and Justin is an amateur jockey.

“And Danny Mullins would be, I won’t call him our senior jockey but Danny has always been a huge help anyway. We think the world of Danny. He’s a great chap. I grew up with Tony and Maggie. “

You are close to the Mullins family?

“Willie is a great help if ever I wanted a bit of advice. We were neighbours at home in the home place. Paddy’s place and our place, you’d hit a hurling ball from one to the other. He would be very helpful now or any of them if I needed help and I’d often ask them their opinions.”

Can you define the essence of Willie Mullins’ success?

“They are extremely professional and very dedicated, Willie never stops thinking, Patrick is the same.

“They have a great team, like Ruby Walsh, probably one of the finest jockeys ever sat on a horse. And they are so up to speed with the game. Patrick, David Casey, Paul Townend and Ruby, but like Willie’s mind never stops.

“His father was the same, Paddy was the same. He was always thinking about something or ways to improve. I’m sure all the people that get to the top do that, just never stop thinking how they could improve.

“He’s a brilliant man to place his horses. I’ve often gone over to Willie’s and it looks like it’s organised mayhem but he knows everything that’s moving, everything that’s happening. And still have time to talk to you, like. No bother to Willie. Watching him do what he’s doing is wonderful because it’s the world over. It’s not just Ireland. No matter where Willie goes with a horse, they went to Japan and won the big race, Australia, anywhere, flat or jumps doesn’t make any difference.

“That’s why Willie Mullins is so successful, Willie trains every horse to get the maximum out of that horse. Regardless as to who owns it. We have a small syndicate now, we got together back over the years, and he gave our horse the same chance as he would a horse whose owner had 10 horses in the yard.

“Her name was changed to Heaven Help Us just on a whim. I was going to call her Mother Of Mercy, that was roughly the name I had in my mind for her.

“It’s a prayer in itself. Every time someone says ‘Heaven Help Us’ maybe heaven will help us.”

black sheep

The Cheltenham Festival is local to everyone now.

“We are ruined to have got a Cheltenham Festival winner but look it, we won’t be going over thinking you won’t ever do it again. But we can always say, we’ll try.

“I’ll tell you a good old story, about three weeks after she won I walked in and the girl in the shop here said ‘I backed your horse’. She said ‘I didn’t know it was your horse, no’. Her father had died recently and herself and her mother were watching the racing and they saw Heaven Help Us and they said ‘here, we’ll back this’. And they backed it, and sure they were screaming away at the horse winning. And then when we were walking in after, the mother said ‘Jaysus, sure there’s Paul Hennessy walking in with that horse.’ That’s the truth.

“There was 12 of us at home and my mother Bridget, she’s still alive, 94 the other day. Yeah, now I was the black sheep. I got plenty of the ole scelps when I was growing up but I probably well-earned them. She’s stone mad about me now, so anyway it’s great, she’s after forgiving me after all these years!

“As I say she (Heaven Help Us) has just been super special, wherever she came from.

“You know to train her is one thing but to train a horse with that name and for her to be running well, it’s a gift.” ?