“He talked with the kings and walked with the crowd.”

THE words of Fr John Byrne perfectly summed up Dessie Hughes, who was laid to rest this week.

Aged 71, the Curragh trainer passed away on Sunday morning following a long illness which he battled bravely. A minute’s silence was observed on Sunday at Cork, Punchestown and Cheltenham and jockeys at all three tracks wore black armbands.

One of racing’s most popular personalities, Dessie Hughes is survived by his wife Eileen, daughter Sandra and son Richard. Sandra has taken over his training licence and had her first runners on Wednesday.

The Carmelite Church in Kildare Town could only hold a fraction of those who turned out for Tuesday’s funeral mass. Practically every trainer, flat and National Hunt, paid their respects and among the sympathisers to travel from England were Richard Hannon, Jonjo O’Neill, A.P. McCoy and Mick Fitzgerald.

DUBLIN SCHOOLBOY

Addressing the congregation, Lar Byrne, owner of Hardy Eustace who Dessie Hughes trained to win 14 races including seven at the top level, described the trainer as “a true blue National Hunt man” who had first dreamed of a life in racing while a schoolboy in Whitehall on the northside of Dublin.

At that time his only knowledge of horses came from riding ponies while on holidays in Wexford or watching the local milkcart go by. He left school at 14 to work for Kilkenny trainer Dan Kirwan and had a handful of rides on the track.

As a 15-year-old he moved to Willie O’Grady’s Tipperary yard. A letter he wrote to his mother in Dublin at that time was read out at Tuesday’s mass by Hughes’s 15-year-old grandchild David. The letter revealed how much he was enjoying his new life and ended with the reassurance “they are Catholics”.

O’Grady supplied Hughes with his first winner as a jockey, Sailaway Sailor at Ballinrobe in 1962. The tall Hughes turned to jump racing later that year and, answering an advertisement in The Irish Field, soon moved across the Irish Sea.

A bad fall at Wolverhampton in 1966 put him in hospital for three months and he returned to Ireland where he was to strike up a partnership with Curragh trainer Mick O’Toole. They combined for six Cheltenham Festival winners during the 1970s, most notably the 1977 Cheltenham Gold Cup on Davy Lad.

TRAINING CAREER

Hughes is also remembered as the rider of 1979 Champion Hurdle winner Monksfield but a year later it was at Cheltenham that Hughes’s riding career was ended when he broke his arm in a fall.

He did not delay in starting his own training yard and sent out his first runner, Church Island, a winner on New Year’s Day, 1980, at Fairyhouse. Cheltenham success arrived in 1982 when Miller Hill won the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle and there were numerous big winners at home throughout that decade.

The 1990s proved very lean times for the Hughes yard, the blame placed on aspergillus, a fungal infection which causes poor performance in racehorses and about which very little was known at the time.

Colonel Braxton put the yard back in the big time by winning two Grade 1 novice hurdles in 2001 and the following year stable companions Hardy Eustace and Central House began what would be prolific racing careers by finishing first and second in the Goffs Land Rover Bumper.

JOCKEY MENTOR

Hughes enjoyed a fine reputation for mentoring young jockeys, among them Kieren Kelly who partnered Hardy Eustace to success in the 2003 Sun Alliance Novices’ Hurdle. Kelly tragically lost his life in a fall at Kilbeggan that same year and the loss was deeply upsetting for Hughes.

Hardy Eustace went on to win two runnings of the Champion Hurdle at Cheltenham and Oulart gave Hughes another Festival winner in 2005. He won the 2003 Irish Grand National with Timbera and went close to winning the Aintree National with 2010 runner-up Black Apalachi.

His final Cheltenham winner came in 2013 when Our Conor romped home in the Triumph Hurdle under another of the trainer’s protégés Bryan Cooper. Other top jockeys to have prospered following spells with Hughes include Charlie Swan, Tom Morgan, Daryl Jacob and of course the trainer’s son Richard, now three-times British flat champion.

Sandra Hughes, speaking at the funeral mass, said that the core values her father tried to instil in others were to “be up early, work hard and be kind to others.”

It was his kindness and his resilience that were chiefly remembered this week. In good times and bad, Dessie Hughes was always willing to help others – a trait which led to his universal popularity. He represented everything that is good about Irish racing.