HE doesn’t yet have a ticket for Croke Park tomorrow but he’s pretty confident somebody will come up with one for him. Brendan Duke is having that kind of year.
Physically, mentally, financially, even romantically – it’s all good. And then there’s the horses. A yard of 30 at the start of the flat season, including 16 from Jim and Jackie Bolger, has been whittled down a little but there is plenty to look forward to every morning.
Heading the Curragh string is three-time winner Warm The Voice. Right now he’s ‘only’ won a maiden and two premier nurseries. But his trainer is not the only judge who thinks there is a lot more to come.
“I know I have an air of optimism about me, I understand that,” he admits on Tuesday evening, after a day of receiving congratulatory calls and texts following Monday’s Listowel success. “But do not make any mistake – this is a proper racehorse that I am training.”
He says the two biggest compliments Warm The Voice has received have in fact come from Kevin Manning, a man not known for exaggerations.
“Kevin is a great judge. Normally after he comes here to ride work on one of mine, he pulls the gloves off, tucks his whip under his left arm, pushes the goggles up, looks at me and says ‘I think this one will struggle, Brendan’. So I am always in a state of trepidation when he comes in.
“Last Thursday Kevin sat on Warm The Voice. When he got down at the top of the gallop, he said ‘Perfect, Brendan. He’s flying’. Now anytime Kevin says that, it’s a different day. And after the Listowel race he came in and said ‘Brendan, he’s really good’ and he also phoned me that night.”
The official handicapper rates Warm The Voice at 96. Exactly 21lb behind Verbal Dexterity (117), Sunday’s Group 1 winner. Kevin Manning rides both horses. Make what you will of that.
“This horse is absolutely bombproof,” says the trainer. “He came home from Kerry and never left one nut. This morning his legs were ice-cold as usual. He’s perfect. Provided Kevin, the horse and myself are happy, he’ll probably go for the Beresford Stakes at Naas next.”
The 2000 Guineas, either at the Curragh or Newmarket, remains the dream. It’s been a long time in the making.
HIGHS AND LOWS
Brendan is a great story-teller, an interviewer’s dream. Asked where it all started, he gives you the full Monty, the highs and lows. And though the lows have sometimes pushed him to the brink, tested his character and his resolve, his sheer love of training racehorses coupled with his glass half-full attitude have seen him come through the fire.
He was born and raised in the working class Dublin suburb of Crumlin, also the birthplace of fighter Conor McGregor. They have nothing in common, or do they? “I’m better looking anyway,” insists Brendan.
Now mostly a concrete jungle of chippers and council houses, Crumlin was a different neighbourhood in the 1950s. “It was a market garden and dairy area,” he remembers. “My father [also named Brendan] fed 400 pigs in Dolphin’s Barn. We had a field on St Teresa’s Road, it’s now a park, and there were cows, sheep, ponies and horses there.”
The eldest of 10 children, Brendan came from a well-respected family. “My grandfather built St Agnes’ Church. I remember very clearly my mother and sisters raising money for it and running carnivals and sales of work to get it built.”
His grandfather was related to the McLernons, a family of amateur riders, and had an interest in racing. Brendan was brought racing occasionally from 1962 onwards but the Dukes were more into hunters and show horses.
He reckons he was bitten by the racing bug following a trip to Fairyhouse for the 1964 Irish Grand National. “There were debates for weeks beforehand about whether it was possible for Arkle to give away two stone to Height O’Fashion. I was there for that race and the excitement of Arkle racing was fantastic.”
From there Brendan discovered flat racing and became a fan of rising star Lester Piggott. “I used to go see him when he came over to Ireland, particularly when he linked up with Vincent O’Brien. We’re talking the early 1970s and I just made a decision then that I wanted to train racehorses.”
His mother, a Hetherington from Kimmage, did not approve. “My parents had got me a private education, in CUS in Leeson Street, and wanted me to have a proper job, like a civil servant or a banker. I felt I worked hard at school but I still wanted to be a racehorse trainer. My mother said it was madness, that it would require a lot of money and she didn’t want me to be struggling all my life. But, to be honest, I didn’t listen too well.”
MEETING JIM BOLGER
Fast forward to 1977. Jack Lynch becomes Taoiseach, Elvis dies and Pele retires from football. On December 8th that year, four decades ago, Brendan travels the short distance over to the Ballsbridge Sales [Tattersalls] and shells out 220gns for a filly foal.
“She was from the first crop of Wishing Star, a Gimcrack winner. Around that time I had started to take notice of Jim Bolger, especially the way his horses were turned out. He was training in Clonsilla [close to Castleknock in north Dublin]. I went to him the following year and said ‘I have a yearling filly and I’d really like you to train her”.
“He asked ‘Why me?’ and I said ‘Because you will be champion one day.”
Jim and Brendan struck up a rapport from that moment which has lasted all these years. The yearling filly, incidentally, was named Auntie Molly and won the O’Brien Cup at Tralee.
Brendan went to work for Jim soon afterwards – “From Crumlin it was just across the Phoenix Park to Clonsilla” – and it coincided with some nice horses coming into the yard. Erins Isle was a particular favourite, a classy three-year-old for Jim in 1981 before being sold by his syndicate of owners to America where he became a Grade 1 winner.
In 1982 Jim moved to Coolcullen in Co Carlow and Brendan went with him. “But I could not get away from the want to train, I could not lose that.”
Finally, in the late 1990s, Brendan took the plunge. “I told Jim I wanted to go training and I was going to England because I couldn’t fund it here. He said it was mad but in 2000 I went over to Lambourn. I worked for Charlie Mann for a year, which was fantastic, and that allowed me time to find my way around.”
TOUGH TIMES
He struck out on his own in 2001 and it was immediately scary. “I never was financially strong,” he explains. “I don’t gamble and you could not exist on the level of prize money that was available in Britain at that time.”
Winners were few and far between but Brendan settled in well and was accepted by the Lambourn set. “You would meet several other trainers every morning. There would always be horsey conversation and banter. They liked me and made me feel welcome. Trainers would go to the races together. It’s very different to here – in many respects I’d say it was a more Christian community in Lambourn and it suited me.”
He never lost touch with Jim and never missed an Irish Derby. There were successful raids too, notably with Openide and Zafonical Storm, who both won blacktype races on the same Tipperary card in 2006.
But after 11 years in Berkshire financial difficulties forced Brendan to return to Ireland. His old job was still there for him in Coolcullen but he decided to make a fresh start on the Curragh. Initially his luck took a turn for the better.
“Luckily I put my hand on a very good horse named Roicead. He came to me in 2011 rated 74 and by the end of the season he was rated 108.”
However, Brendan was struggling to settle in on the Curragh. “I love this country but you can be very isolated as a trainer here. Well, I was anyway. Obviously things have changed in the intervening years but initially when I came back hardly anybody talked to me. I don’t think it was anything personal – some Irish jockeys told me they felt the same when they came back from England to ride here.”
That mental pressure and sense of isolation is something a lot of small trainers can probably identify with, reckons Brendan. “I think there are a lot of trainers in Ireland who are really struggling to keep it going. It’s very hard, particularly if you have a young family.
“You have to have your ducks organised, know when your money is coming in and going out. To a small guy, if one owner delays a payment even by a couple of days it can have a huge effect on your life and on your family.”
The hurdler Mister Benedictine won three races for Brendan in 2013 – “he was a major help” – and Jim Bolger sent him a two-year-old, Focussed, who won the nursery at Galway and another one at Sligo with 10st 4lb on his back.
It was the start of something bigger between the two old friends.
“It began to grow from there. I had a conversation with Jim that year, vis a vis the viability of training racehorses. I really wanted to do it but I suppose a part of my problem was that money was not in the forefront of my mind. I just had the will to train racehorses.
“Jim said, ‘Right, if you want to do it we have a lot of horses here. We’ll have to work through the bad ones. Don’t expect too many winners for the first five years but there will be better days ahead.’”
Brendan didn’t doubt Jim’s word for a moment. “Everyone who has been involved with Jim understands that nothing happens overnight. But if you are prepared to be professional, up front and put the work in, you will be rewarded in time.”
In 2014 Brendan saddled 14 individual horses for the Bolgers. They raced 69 times and won three small races between them. Year 2 of the experiment yielded two Bolger-owned winners from 17 horses and almost 100 outings.
There wasn’t a lot to cheer about but Brendan wasn’t complaining. “I was feeling better as I knew what I had were ordinary in the main but I was grateful to have them. I was getting paid to do the best I could with them.”
When his spirits were down he would tell himself: ‘Look, in 2018 you will train a few winners and you will feel a lot better.’
UPTURN IN FORTUNES
As we now know, Brendan didn’t have to wait the full five years. Indeed, he got a hint two years ago that his 2017 batch might be upgraded.
“In December 2015 I asked Jim about his foals and he said ‘Brendan, they are to die for. They are quality, there a lot of really nice foals among them. I was feeling better then as I knew I would get a share of some of them.”
A little more patience was needed. In 2016 Brendan saddled 16 individual horses for the Bolgers. No winners, very few places. “I love my horses, I’m addicted to them, but it is very tough when you are getting up early every day to feed them, train them, go racing and they are letting you down or getting no luck. It really hurts. You need a strong temperament to get up the next day and do it all again. I love it but you’d like the odd one to put their head over the parapet.”
Those winners have now started to trickle. Brendan has hinted there are a few more nice types popping their heads over the stable doors who will be out in due course. The trainer will be at the yearling sales in Fairyhouse next week with no less than three orders. He acknowledges how much he owes Jim and Jackie.
“I love Jim Bolger. He knows that. I told him that a long time ago. It’s not just because he set me up. You always know where you are with Jim. When I was in England and times were really tough he would ring me periodically and tell me I could come back anytime.
“And whenever I would call him, he always had time for me no matter how busy he was. He might say ‘you have 10 seconds and three of them are gone’, then give me a bollocking, but then he’d give me every bit of help he could.”
Watching Verbal Dexterity stamp himself as a top-class colt at the Curragh on Sunday, Brendan was possibly happier than the owner-breeders. He’s his own man but in many ways he is still part of the Bolger team. Even when he doesn’t have a runner, Brendan likes nothing better than giving Jim’s head lads Pat O’Donovan and Ger Flynn a helping hand at the races.
Jim was not at Listowel on Monday but one suspects he got an equally good kick watching Warm The Voice bravely win under his son-in-law followed by Brendan’s elation in the winner’s enclosure.
The trainer’s remarks on TG4 were vintage JSB. “I thought I’d come down here, win a few quid, and say hello to my Kerry friends as youse won’t be coming to Jones’s Road on Sunday. Now I’m going to have a cup of tea and some cheesecake, if you have that here.”
Let him have his cake and eat it. It was a long time in the oven.
DOMESTIC BLISS
I am having a fantastic time in my life right now. My partner Shirley came into my life earlier this year and we’re expecting a baby in January. Some people will say it’s very wrong at my age but I can’t do anything about that. It was always my intention to do my lots on my 100th birthday, go up to the Park to collect my cheque, and then go to the races. Instead of an aspiration that is now a necessity.
MR BRIGHTSIDE
I’ve always told myself ‘Brendan, you can do this’. In the blackest times, when I hadn’t a horse rated 70, I would tell myself I was going to train an Irish Derby winner. Any of us could get a Seabiscuit, a Phar Lap. Things like that motivate me. I’d advise any trainer to get out the Phar Lap DVD when things are going bad. It’s a fantastic story.
RACING POLITICS
There are certain trainers under both codes who influence the programme book. They should think of their colleagues. I don’t think it’s a level playing field. I’ll leave it at that. There is incredible talent in Irish racing but there is also incredible selfishness. Smaller owners and trainers cannot get their horses into valuable handicaps because of multiple entries and in my opinion a lot of those horses do no merit being declared to run on their form figures.
RACECOURSE FACILITIES
Tracks here have taken a huge step forward with the complimentary meal for owners and trainers on the day. We should be grateful for that but not jumping up and down. All tracks should entertain the owners, particularly the losing ones. The winners are in a very different state of mind and will make their own entertainment.
INFORMING THE PUBLIC
I am very saddened by the fall-off in attendances at some of our premier tracks. I feel that the training fraternity in general do not understand how important the public are to the sport. In many other sports the participants go out of their way to meet the supporters. In my opinion there is still a ‘nod-and-wink’ mentality in Irish racing.
I don’t bet so it’s much easier for me to talk about my runners. But racing has never been so clean or as competitive as it is today. I would like to dispel this myth about gambles being organised.
We are competing with a lot of sports and we need to get our act together and treasure the people who are coming to support racing. They are paying in, they are betting, and they deserve plenty of recognition for that.
THE DEMON DRINK
I was pretty good at athletics when I was younger and I have never been a drinker. I was known in England as the Irishman who didn’t drink. I’d rather have a rock shandy and a piece of blackforest gateau than a pint of Guinness in my hand. Alcohol has ruined plenty of promising jockeys and I suppose trainers as well.
ALL-IRELAND FINAL
I’m a True Blue. I don’t think Mayo or any team are a match for Dublin. I cannot see how [Mayo’s] Andy Moran is going to function against that Dublin defence at his age, unless they have very special water in Mayo. We’d all like to see a good game but it’s like a Group 1 horse taking on a premier handicapper.