Helen Sharp (HS): Is soundness a breeding issue?

AO: Very much so, the thoroughbred racehorse is probably the most genetically selected animal on the planet, and we have selected ultimately for speed. Yes, their ability to win a race, but sometimes that has precluded soundness, you can see it a lot in different jurisdictions around the world.

When you are training young horses, well any horse, you can have one with the most unwieldy conformation and they never take a lame step. You can buy the most expensive horse at the sale that has perfect conformation, and it’s never sound. So, it doesn’t always go by the book.

Ireland is slightly different because we have so many different courses, a horse has to handle up hill, down vale, it has to handle soft ground and it has to handle fast ground. We do probably breed sounder horses in general because we’ve a greater population of mares, different types of mares, horses that are breeding soundness issues very much get found out in the system. But no doubt that a lot of it is down to genetics.

HS: Generally, do you think racing is breeding stayers out of it a bit?

AO: Ireland is lucky enough, they have enough horses that are breeding to stay. Ultimately the real stayers on the flat go to the National Hunt game. But still, there are a lot of horses who have staying pedigrees on the dam side, they can certainly get a trip, but we would still be a big export for stayers. Particularly the southern hemisphere, they are breeding all for speed. So, they very much look to Ireland for staying pedigrees.

HS: What is your observation on training fillies versus colts, do you notice a difference?

AO: We certainly don’t go to the sales and select any different, sometimes there are some things that are particular to one filly, when you turn them out you might need to relax them and sometimes might need a bit more TLC, but not really. Their exercise regime is the same and the build-up is the same. They have to go through the same preparation, so I wouldn’t differentiate.

HS: You seem to have a really good team, do you find it hard to get staff?

AO: We have tough times of the year when all the horses are at work, just after Christmas in the prep for the season. That would tend to be a pinch point for us. But we have been lucky. We have a good team and some of them are with me a long time. If someone makes an inquiry and they look like they have a good interest and are capable, we’ll never turn them down, even sometimes we are over staffed because we are thinking long-term. So yeah, we are lucky enough now staffing doesn’t become too much of a bugbear.

HS: Do you have a particular diet regime for your horses?

I try not to over think it. I think we’re giving the feed companies enough for their feed so I let them do all the science behind it. We do pick the best we can, and I’m a stickler for fresh feed, we vary feeds according to horses but we very much stick to what is presented.

We don’t use any supplements, a bit of oil and a bit of salt. I’m not the greatest receiver of people who come in to the yard to try and sell me supplements, I think you could end up filling your bucket with different powders and different concoctions and have no room for the feed which is the fundamental energy driver of the horses.

HS: What does the daily routine look like at Andy Oliver Racing?

AO: The horses are fed at 5.30 am. One of our main assays of health is how well they eat. So we have a chap comes in and feed and we clear out every feed trough and record what they’ve eaten or what they’ve left. And we find that if you have a horse that eats up regularly and one day you go in and there’s a handful of nuts left, almost certainly we will find something wrong with that horse: whether it’s a temperature or it’s sore or he’s lame, just something to put him off, so we’re quite diligent in that routine of feeding.

The next body of staff come in at 6.30 and the horses start to go on the walker, we have three walkers, they are tools to warm them up. They spend 45 minutes in that and then the main body of staff comes in at 7.30 and they will swap those walkers. So, we’ll have 48 warmed up by 8.15. The riders start about eight and we can do up to six lots a morning, they’re ridden out for 45 minutes each.

We have three different types of gallops, so we can vary it according to the horses if they need a special regime or special attention. When they come back from their exercise, they are washed off and put back in the walker again for another 45 minutes, so they’re roughly out a couple of hours every day.

During the morning they’re mucked out, fresh bedding put in, we don’t use a drinker system, we use fresh water so every horse gets their buckets which are scrubbed every day because we want to see how much they drink. Also, I’ve seen these drinker systems and no matter how well you do it, there’s always a wee bit of scum or silt at the back of them, so we just like to use fresh buckets.

Fresh air

They’re all hayed first thing in the morning too, we operate on a farm and we are lucky enough to have plenty of land so we’ve 15 paddocks here and we try and turn out horses regularly. It’s great for their health, fresh air, a nibble of grass.

Grass is alkaline and there are a couple of metabolic conditions in horses that can affect their training such as tying up or gut ulcers which has become understood more in recent years. Turn out is a sort of physiotherapy, rather than standing in a stable they get to run about and its great to relax them.

Something we do that is slightly different is that we like to turn them out as much as we can before they go out. A lot of people exercise first and then throw them out, but we like to throw them out in the morning, as many as we can, and if they get time out in the field before they exercise, we find it really helps them in their work.

They’re fed at lunch time and then in the afternoon we check on them, groom them and make sure they have fresh water. They’re fed again at five in the evening and then nine at night.

HS: When you are training the younger horses and they are changing physically, how do you work with that?

AO: Time. One of the greatest things you have in training young horses or any young athlete is giving them time to develop. But you do need to train them, you need to do the hard yards, you need to make them progress. We would have the philosophy that if a young horse gets a problem, we’ll stop them and back off.

We will give them time to recover. Being a vet helps me because I know what time they should need to recover from most things, I can see, and then we’ll go again.

And if another problem arises or the same problem occurs, we’ll back off, but if they have two or three problems a year now, we will eventually say time is enough and we’ll let then off until their second season.

Once they get into their three-year-old career, then we will push them to try and get them to the racecourse, but certainly the two-year-olds we give them as much time as they need.

HS: How do you know when a horse is at its limit?

AO: Well, depends if it’s limited in handicap mark or the limits of its different abilities. If you put enough groundwork and conditioning into a horse there’s no reason why they can’t continue to improve and thrive in training.

Although we tend to have a lot of young horses and some of them we sell on as three-year-olds, so we don’t have a great personnel of older horses, but any older horses that we have, providing they have all that groundwork behind them, we do find that they can take racing, and they’ll always find their level and they can improve with age.

Sometimes, you find in a handicap mark that a horse is as good as they are. And then, by the nature of the game, if they can’t do any better than that, they’ll drop down the handicap until they are off a winning mark. It’s in nobody’s best interest to stretch a horse to its limit. Certainly, in training we never do that, they are only ever put to race condition when they are racing. Because if you do that you will leave a race at home for sure.

HS: What role does instinct play in training?

AO: The old horsemanship has always played a part and still does. And although you could standardise training, as a vet I have investigated all the physiology of training and you can have parameters that assess, but ultimately, you still need someone on the ground that is able to make the final call. That’s still horsemanship. So, it’s still there, still recognised, and if you like to call that instinct, then yeah, it’s still very much part of good training.

HS: Do you find your location up north in Tyrone an impediment in any way?

AO: We actually found a number of years ago that the two tracks we had the highest strike rate at were the two furthest away from us, Cork and Killarney! We learned that there’s no impediment to travelling horses to race providing you do it well. So we send them off early, they get there early, most times we’re the first lorry at the racecourse, they get plenty of time to relax and then come home after they’ve raced.

HS: Is there anything that the racing industry in Ireland are not doing for trainers do?

AO: I’m not a great politician, I don’t watch the politics of it. I was in a trainers’ association for years. Having said that, obviously if you are attracting ownership and we have to because training is our business and we need owners to do that funding - there has to be some end stage for them, has to be some enjoyment and some recognition.

Prize money is good, Ireland does well, there are other jurisdictions that do better, it’s something you constantly have to try and keep up with because the cost of everything is going up. The cost of training a horse, the cost of the trainers, so owners need at least some chance of recoup.

And also at racecourses, that’s their day out. They might only get two or three of these occasions a year, they need to feel as if they are getting well looked after, and most racecourses are doing a great job there. Some are still a wee bit behind the curve - that needs to be improved. But ultimately, owners are funding the spectacle, the spectacle is what attracts people to the racecourses, so absolutely I think that going back to fundamentals in racing is always a good start.

HS: Would it be fair to say that the onus should be on the owners to have responsibility for the lifelong care of their racehorses?

AO: I think it’s a good thing that people are now more aware of their duty of care to the horses. Trainers being the ones that are vilified over it - a trainer has only the duty of care when an owner puts it into them. If the horse goes back to the owner, it is then their responsibility. I think it is definitely something that people should be mindful of, the public deserve to know that animals are being well looked after.

I think it has been highlighted in recent years with the rise of social media and people involved, it’s good. Scrutiny is not a bad thing. Nobody should be trying to have ugly secrets.

I’m a vet, so it’s always been part of my career, animal care. There are occasions where there’s no satisfactory outcome, if you have a catastrophe at the racecourse or something like that, but we have been lucky enough to have good opportunity to rehome horses and will continue to do so.

Flat racehorses tend to be smaller, so we have sent a lot of them to the polo field, some have gone on to event, and we’ve sent a lot of them as riding horses.

If you are a successful racehorse trainer you have to care for your animals well, otherwise they won’t perform for you.

If it’s dairy cow or beef production, good animal welfare systems produce good results, good farmers look after their animals and good racehorse trainers look after their horses.