MICHAEL O’Callaghan has planted 15 native species of trees, comprising 9,000 trees in total, at his developing Grangebeg yard, utilising the Miyawaki technique to facilitate a more rapid growth of dense forests.

He has a couple of giant sequoias too, at the entrance - tiny still, compared to the near 85 metres they can grow and about 3,000 years off the potential completion of their lifespan.

The Cedar of Lebanon may well be the prince though. Originating in Germany, in a premises bought out by Caragh Nurseries, it made the journey to Kildare with all the other trees, at the insistence of the seller.

It was not healthy, however, and spent seven or eight years at the back of the shop, unnurtured and slowly fading. But it caught O’Callaghan’s eye, despite its brown, dead branches and lack of foliage. He made an enquiry. A nominal fee was agreed.

To see the Cedar now, and to witness O’Callaghan’s pride at the progress it has made, is quite something. It isn’t fully bloomed but is thriving, having been cared for and given time. There is far more green and some of that trademark yellow-brown towards the top. The renewal is well and truly under way.

Like his dogs, Samhain and Liath, O’Callaghan’s Cedar is a rescue and it has proven its spirit and toughness. Liath, who only has three legs, bounced back from a life-threatening illness earlier this year.

And, in a year like no other, resilience has been required of O’Callaghan too. Despite the death of his mentor and long-time ally, John Fleming, in a tragic accident in April, and a virus at the same time that forced him to pull stumps at the yard for almost two months, he is tracking towards another prosperous season, with a host of talented unraced horses still to run.

He has added to his stakes tally, which stands at 15, thanks to Navassa Island, the first-ever winner in Fleming’s colours and the yard’s last before his death, and Celeron, whose purchase was only completed when the late accountant dug into his pocket on behalf of his wife Marian, to partner with Eleanora Kennedy and Aurelija Kupryte.

In the Bible, the Cedar of Lebanon is used to symbolise strength and resilience. The German Cedar has found a fitting forever home.

Training racehorses

Earlier this year, William Haggas, one of the most successful trainers on the planet, described the job of training racehorses as “mostly disaster punctuated by the odd bit of good fortune” and there are very few that would demur.

O’Callaghan hasn’t achieved anything like Haggas, but turning 38 next week, he has managed more than Haggas had at that age, without any early links to the industry. Indeed, Haggas was 37 when he saddled his first winner. O’Callaghan has more than 220 now.

Raised in a Tralee housing estate, and introduced to racing by his namesake grandfather, who liked to have a few bets on a Saturday, he proved a natural horseman when a friend’s mother took him to Kennedy’s Equine Centre for a few riding lessons.

While still in his teens, he got involved in pinhooking and producing breezers, in partnership with his father - also Michael.

They rented Millgrove Stud in Rathangan in 2009. Sourcing young talent at a budget was to be O’Callaghan’s metier.

It was 16 years ago when John Fleming came into his orbit. They would become inseparable, despite their quarter-century age difference.

Seeing what horses with maiden form were being sold for, they resolved to take their stock that next step themselves. So O’Callaghan took out a licence to train in 2012.

Fuelled by having two placed Irish Guineas horses in 2016 (via early stakes winners, Blue De Vega and Now Or Never), as well as a competitor’s spirit, making the sums add up began to compete with the desire to produce at as high a level as possible. Ger Lyons is the exemplar in this regard.

As well as his tally of winners and stakes success, O’Callaghan has saddled 60 two-year-old stakes-placed horses alone. The results are there, in black and white.

Purpose-built

Having had a spell on the Curragh, he moved to this purpose-built operation between Kilcullen and Dunlavin in March 2023. Although it is often said that you need time to learn how a new gallop works, he registered 25 winners that season and a new PB of 26 was posted last year.

Today, facile maiden winner Push The Boat Out, German Guineas-placed Sky Watch and dual victor Saga Gaga are in Group 3 competition at HQ today. And of others that have seen the track to date, the likes of Bamako Beach and Red Evolution are still on the upgrade.

Ten new boxes were built this year to meet demand and he has 50 on site now. You wonder if he has a sweet spot in terms of numbers, to make business sense and for it all to be manageable.

“I used to think I’d be happy with less, but there are times now when I think you could do with more numbers, just to have more opportunities,” he muses on the way to Dunlavin to grab a coffee.

What happened to Celeron in the Keeneland Phoenix Stakes shines a spotlight on the challenges of having just one dart to fire. O’Callaghan is long enough around to not get carried away, but after Celeron bolted up in the Gain Railway Stakes, it was hard not to consider the possibility that a maiden Group 1 might be in touching distance.

The son of Mohaather finished lame, found to have sprained his right hind joint and jarred a hock. Thankfully, it isn’t terminal and he will be back. But might that have been his trainer’s shot?

Disappointment.

“The dream is still alive with Celeron, but it shows how hard it is. You don’t realise it yourself until you see the hangover two weeks later of disappointment.

“On the day initially, I was totally deflated, like someone’s put a pin in you. Leading up to it - you try not to - but you’re thinking of all the possibilities. I never had a two-year-old to win the Railway Stakes by three lengths and be rated 112. This is a genuine Group 1 horse.

“You’re going there with big hopes, 6/4 for a Group 1. And then he bombs out. To be injured, but not seriously, is a weird sort of relief.

“Then you figure out the issues, what went wrong. And then you just go (sighs). Another one has passed by.”

Celeron is beginning to ease back into exercise now. How that progresses will determine whether he returns this season, or next. O’Callaghan is adamant he is a three-year-old model, with the potential to be a high-class miler next term.

It would be just another John Fleming legacy.

If he has Celeron only because Fleming provided the final funds to ensure the deal would not collapse, so it is with the yard.

It was his consiglieri - known to most as Harvey - who poked him in the ribs and told him to make one final bid at the auction. He walked out with his head in his hands, wondering how he’d make it work, but Fleming was buoyant. Make it work he would.

And he has.

It is divine. The original parcel of 25 acres now numbers 105. At 705 feet above sea level, you can see the roof of the stand at Curragh Racecourse, the various wind turbines in Offaly. They are 800 metres from Wicklow, with Lugnaquilla looming. The Dublin Mountains over there. The Slieve Blooms across there. Brewel Hill. In all, with Carlow included, you have a view of seven counties. And overlooking Brannockstown, where O’Callaghan’s wife Siobhain - a key member of the on-the-ground team - grew up.

With a 10-horse walker, a lunge ring, a stupendous seven and a half furlong uphill gallop that rises 65 metres from bottom to top, and a two-furlong round gallop, he has all he needs.

With the increased capacity and Breaking Dawn nabbing a three-year-old maiden on the opening day of the season, he was ready to set a new standard.

Hit in the guts

“But then, we were hit in the guts with, firstly, mostly, Harvey’s death, which just knocked me and the yard for six, for at least a month.

“And leading up to that, we got a virus… so we made the decision we weren’t going to have a runner for the bones of a month.

“We put this place on lockdown, went off to the breeze-ups, and after the second sale then (Goffs Doncaster), Harvey was killed. That all overlapped and it was the bones of eight weeks.

“So you’re trying to get back on target and you’re trying to deal with your grief in amongst it. And never having experienced it before - the different stages of it. You think you’re just getting back on your feet and you get another wave of something that takes the wind out of your sails.”

Last Sunday was four months to the day from when Harvey was struck by a bus at Dublin Airport. O’Callaghan had landed on an earlier flight, after Fleming had suggested they book it as a cheap back-up. Only he forgot to do so.

Prior to that, they had travelled together everywhere. Same flight, same rental car, same hotel. Breakfast together, lunch together. Sale together. Bought a colt, with Harvey himself on the phone to Eleanora Kennedy throughout. She named the horse The Harv, in his honour, and he won on debut at Goodwood on another emotion-drenched day.

O’Callaghan’s eyes well up as he details the events of the early hours of April 23rd. We don’t need to recount them here.

But it was eerie the way he sat up bolt upright in the bed, just as a message came in, having put his phone on silent. There were missed calls too. The maelstrom of thoughts and feelings on the drive up at the request of the guards, hoping against hope. Then his gut hitting the pavement as he was asked to identify his best friend and confidant. Walking towards the scene.

It was him, but it wasn’t him. The vivacity, the spirit. It had flown.

Disbelief. Devastation.

The wake was incredible, the funeral even more so. O’Callaghan penned a poem. To deliver it must have been hell. It was poignant. Apposite. And perfect.

It was entitled The Measure of a Man and the sheer size of the turnout emphasised just that.

The following week, O’Callaghan somehow forced himself to go to Tattersalls Breeze-Up and signed for a Kodi Bear colt under the handle, ‘Michael and Harvey.’ That was Push The Boat Out, named after a famous Fleming mantra.

Good side out

“I only noticed in the last two weeks a different stage of it. The first month is a blur, and you put the good side out and you try to be strong, and you try and keep things going. And the outpouring of support and all of that is carrying you through.

“But you get to kind of three months, and after that, it quietens down, and life is, in one sense, back to normal. But it’s never going to be the same. And it’s kind of the new normal hits home, and it gets tough in a different sort of way.

“The questions and the issues and the problems, and that person that you relied on to be a sounding board… when things don’t go right, the likes of Celeron and stuff - in the week or so after that we’d have been chatting about it. He’d be picking you up in his own way. That’s not there any more. There’s stuff arising that he would have sorted.

“And you’re just like, ‘Fuuccck’. You know?”

Inquisitiveness

Siobhain was a huge strength then, as she always has been, since they met on the Irish National Stud management course in 2008.

Baby Michael was born 22 months ago last Wednesday. He is the eighth first-born son of that name. He certainly possesses a similar inquisitiveness and energy to his father.

“They are amazing to have, to keep going for, even through something like this. To not go off the rails, to not sink into the ‘this is terrible’ feeling, and ‘what am I doing it for?’”

In the past, O’Callaghan has driven a motor series at Mondello, and learned to fly planes. Now, as he continues to seek a pastime to provide balance and free the mind of the pressures of his job, he is leaning into his artistic bent that was always there, in the shadows.

The poetry is one element. Photography another. Painting. Sculpting. He likes to be abstract, to create work that is open to interpretation.

And then there are the horses.

“The horses require serious input. You can’t stop. And the staff as well, the team here. For them, you can’t stop. And the team here kept the whole show on the road, but they can’t do it without me. But they were a huge part of getting through it. And a huge reason for getting through it, because that’s what Harvey would have wanted. It was what he was a huge part of building.

“There’s not one member of the team here that wasn’t hugely affected by (his death). The previous Friday, himself and Marian brought the whole team out for dinner in Kilcullen, to say thanks after Navassa Island winning. So every single person here had a very immediate, lovely memory of him. To add to every other lovely memory they had of him.”

“Death... It’s not just sorrow and loss, it’s savouring what you had,” as George Carlin said. Or to quote Winnie The Pooh: “How lucky am I to have something that makes goodbye so hard?”

Which is why Celeron and The Harv winning engendered feelings of euphoria and sadness, in equal measure.

“You’re just like Jesus, this man is pulling a few strings already!” And so the show goes on. Rebuild and renew.

Difficult game

“I want to train good horses for good people, because it’s a difficult game, and it’s a difficult way of life. So, the better the people you do it for, and the better a calibre of people that are on your team, and the better calibre of horse you have, the better it all is.

“And trading is a necessary part of it, because you want to operate it at a high level. You want to have good facilities. You want to be winning good races. You want to be improving the stock that come into the place. You have to sometimes sell your best horses, and sometimes that knocks you back a little bit. But sometimes you get to keep them, and you’re just hoping that at some point, instead of taking one step forward, two back, that you start taking two steps forward, one step back.

“One way of looking at it is, did I think when I started out I’d be here at 37? Yes. Part of me would have hoped I’d be further down the road. And part of me wouldn’t have believed it either.

“We’re very ambitious and we have a very, very good team and we put everything we get out of it back into it and more. So we will keep looking to improve. It’s what I want, what everyone here wants and it’s what Harvey would have wanted.”