MICK Mulvany set the tone for his season when winning the Irish Lincoln with 20/1 shot Ribee on the first day of the flat. It was the Dublin-born, Meath-based handler’s third straight win with the four-year-old, and second win in the valuable premier handicap.

Premier handicaps can, thankfully, often reward the smaller yards with big paydays, but Curragh maidens are typically won by a certain few yards, so Mulvany’s Good Friday became a very good Friday when Lars Soldier, bought by the trainer’s brother Laurence for just €3,500, beat Ballydoyle’s Confucius in a Curragh maiden.

I’m sure even O’Brien, Coolmore and partners admired Mulvany, if more than a bit miffed to have their 1,700,000gns recruit beaten by a real bargain. It was no fluke either as the two-year-old went on to finish fifth in what has worked out to be a strong renewal of the Marble Hill Stakes.

Another two juvenile maiden winners later, Mulvany added the Rockingham Handicap to his CV on Irish Derby weekend when Michael Foley’s home-bred Genesis posted a career-best for his third trainer. Mulvany is hoping to continue Genesis’ fine season, and his own, next weekend when stepping back up in trip in the Scurry Handicap.

On winning the Rockingham, Mulvany reflected: “It was lovely to win it. All of those premier handicaps on the big occasions, it’s not easy to win any of them. It’s like winning five or six ordinary races when you win one of them.

“I was delighted for the owners of the horse, as well. They’ve stuck with the horse; he’s had plenty of problems. They’re good owners, they love the game.”

Mulvany has plenty to look forward to at the Galway Festival, too, where he hopes to run Ribee, who finished second in another premier handicap since his major victory.

“He’s training well here, so we might have a go at the Galway Mile with him. If the ground came up soft enough on the day, he’d have a chance.”

Changing times

While Irish maidens might be the most obvious shop window for trainers and buyers, I thought there may have been interest in Ribee before his valuable win, given that John Lee’s home-bred won three of his last five starts the previous season.

So, I was surprised to hear that no offers have ever been made for Ribee or Genesis, and even more surprised that the same applied to Mulvany’s two-year-old maiden winners too.

“It’s amazing that the good young horses we’ve had this year - we won three maidens - and nobody even made an offer for any of them,” he reports.

“The market must have changed a little bit. Normally you’d have no problem selling them, but nobody has come for them this year. Trump might have put a bit of pay to that, it’s not as lucrative as it was.”

While trading is an important revenue for any smaller yard in Ireland, the lack thereof has meant that Mulvany has been able to prove his horses’ promise himself.

He’s hoping that Lars Soldier will show what he’s capable of now that the son of Soldier’s Call has been gelded.

“He ran off the bend a little bit the last day in Fairyhouse, we were a little bit disappointed. He had other things on his mind, so that’s why we gelded him. Maybe it could have been a mistake, but these things happen, you know

“We’ll know more shortly because he’ll run at the Curragh on Oaks weekend, all going well, in the handicap (James Nolan Bar Kildare Nursery Handicap on Sunday, July 19th).”

Much has been made of Lars Soldier’s yearling price, as well as the €9,000 Mulvany paid for the now 84-rated juvenile Arizona Raider and the €10,000 owner Eamon Cleary paid for their 90-rated Listowel maiden winner, The Scallionator.

Banks Of The Boyne came close to joining the honour roll, when the €3,000 yearling finished second in a maiden at Fairyhouse on Wednesday at odds of 100/1. So, how does he do it? Does he look at every single horse on the sales ground?

Eyes open

“I’d look at very few horses [at their stable], unless somebody asked me to look at one,” he replies. “I stand at one side of the ring, and I probably wouldn’t even ask anybody to talk them up, I just keep my eyes open.

“I like to buy a horse that walks well. Their pedigree doesn’t matter that much to me, the stallion doesn’t matter - they’re all capable of throwing a good horse. I’d be more inclined to look at the dam’s side; I like buying out of winning mares.”

The prices of Mulvany’s horses aren’t the only inspiration for those seeking success with limited resources - his background and introduction into buying and training isn’t conventional either.

His father, Larry, was involved in greyhound racing before entering horse ownership through syndicates and progressed into racing horses he bred himself. Mick, meanwhile, was training greyhounds successfully, while also pretraining the home-breds.

“Initially, we only started to train for ourselves and have a bit of fun,” he explains. “It’s only in the last few years that we started taking horses for other people. A lot of the owners I have are friends, or people that know somebody I know. It’s more like a big family.”

Learning how to buy horses was a similarly organic process, he adds: “You learn as you go along, but you just either have an eye for it or you don’t. We’ve done a lot of farming here over the years, as well, and you’d know what to be looking for in animals, you just know what you’d like and what you wouldn’t like.”

However easy Mulvany may be making it look at the moment, he stresses that’s not the case. “It’s not easy - you could buy a load of horses this year and none of them end up any good. You need a little bit of luck along the way too.”

Low prices aren’t just easy on the pocket, he adds: “I’ve found that when you buy a real dear horse, it’s very hard to make up your mind on them - you’re always giving them another chance, and another chance. Whereas if you buy a cheaper horse, it’s easier to say that he’s no good.”

Honesty policy

Admitting that a horse isn’t up to the task is important to Mulvany, who would rather save owners’ time and money, rather than worry about their feelings, or persevere in order to collect more training fees.

“It’s sometimes easier to tell a fella his wife is ugly than his horse is no good, but over the years I’ve found that eventually they (owners) respect you for it. If they’re not good enough, they’re not good enough, and honesty is the best policy, but not everybody can do that.”

Mulvany’s level head and practical approach is also clear when I ask whether he’s eternally optimistic or usually frustrated as a bargain hunter taking on bigger yards in the ultra-competitive world of Irish racing.

“If you want to be a horse trainer, there’s plenty of frustration,” he replies with a laugh. “You only see the good days, but there’s plenty of bad days as well, and plenty of pressure attached.

“At the end of the day, it’s as easy to be in good form as it is to be in bad form, but in general, we don’t lose the head too much here.”

Arizona Raider is a recent example of changing fortunes, though thankfully not to extremes, as Mulvany’s Roscommon maiden winner was declared a non-runner in the Coventry Stakes.

“He will probably be heading on a little break; he came home from Ascot with a small little problem. He’ll probably be back later in the season,” Mulvany explains.

Things didn’t entirely go The Scallionator’s way at Ascot either, though he did get to take his chance, and will now target the Railway Stakes and Phoenix Stakes, in which Mulvany’s previous stable star Tough As Nails (a €3,000 yearling) finished second and third respectively.

“I’d just like to see a little bit more ease in the ground for The Scallionator,” the trainer comments. “I thought the ground at Ascot was a little bit too firm for him.”

Loyalty

Mulvany’s stable jockey Wesley Joyce retained the ride at Ascot, when some others may have opted for more household names at flat racing’s biggest stage. There was never any chance of that happening, though, Mulvany informs me.

“He’s a very hard worker and you have to be fair to people,” he says. “You must remember Gary Carroll rode Tough As Nails, when we could have gotten Johnny Murtagh or another big name.

“Wesley is with me every day and he comes a journey every day to work. He’s loyal and that works both ways - you have to reward loyalty too.

“We all make mistakes - he makes mistakes and so do I, but we work as a team and it’s a team effort. Anybody who works for me will get their chances and I’ve seen over the years that this system works.”

While Mulvany tells me that the pair ‘very seldom had any bad words’, that’s not to say that it’s been plain sailing either, as Joyce suffered a horror fall at the 2022 Galway Festival, in which he suffered broken ribs, a punctured lung, a broken shoulder and a fractured larynx.

Joyce returned to the saddle a year later and has enjoyed his best seasons over the past two years. His success is not only testament to his resilience, but also an example of the terrific work done at the Moyross Youth Academy in Limerick, where he discovered horse racing at the age of five.

He’s not the only jockey to have come down such a path, Mulvany reminds me, when I ask the Dublin native how more people could be attracted to racing.

“You take Wesley [Joyce] and Terry Casey and Dylan Hogan, they came from the inner city in Limerick and look at the way that they are turning out, because they got a chance, and people showed an interest in them.

“To me, it’s about setting up the right channels and putting the funding where it should be put. There’s the very best of people in good and bad areas.

“I was born and reared in a pub, and you were dealing with the public every day, you had to take the rough with the smooth and take people like you found them. To me, that gave me the perfect grounding.”

Family team

His interest in racing, as well as that perfect grounding, is credit to his father Larry, who remains involved in the family operation outside Kells.

“My father started the show,” Mulvany reports. “He’s always been competitive. Even today, if he goes fishing, he wants to win, and he instilled that into all of us.

“My brother Laurence does a lot of the work behind the scenes. My nephew, Jamie O’Sullivan, is the farrier and rides out, too. And if I ever needed anything, there’d be one or two of the brothers who would do it. It’s a family organisation.”

Mulvany’s wife Edel is another key cog in the wheel, particularly when it comes to her husband’s most dreaded task, paperwork.

“At the moment with the IHRB, there’s an awful lot of paperwork involved,” Mulvany says. “There’s an awful lot of extra work, especially for a smaller operation, who wouldn’t have secretaries or maybe even an office.

“That’s the hidden work that people don’t see behind the scenes.”

Mick and Edel’s son Larry is currently gaining valuable experience in the US, but his father hopes that he can be tempted back home when the time comes.

“Hopefully, further down the line, my son will come back from America and take over. He’s currently assistant trainer to Brendan Walsh.”

Mulvany has more immediate hopes, of course, as well as an important decision to make. “Over the calendar year, we had 25 winners last year and we’re only at nine at the moment, but they’ve been a better class of winners. We’re hoping now that our numbers keep coming up and we keep kicking in good winners.

“I’d say for the last 15 or 16 years, we’ve been in the first 20 trainers in Ireland and we’d be hopeful we could move up the line. The whole thing is to try get better quality - that’s the hardest part.”

On quantity, meanwhile, Mulvany says: “At the moment, we’re up in numbers, we have 26 riding out. Over the last 10 years, we’d usually only have 15 or 16.

“I have to make up my mind now whether I get bigger or go back the other way. We have plenty of room to develop more stables, but when you get bigger, it gets harder and you need more staff. So I’m in between now deciding whether I push it on or take a pull.”

The man talks a lot of sense and, given his background, I’m keen to hear his thoughts on the rising pressure against greyhound and horse racing, particularly given developments in Wales.

“I think that the Irish authorities probably bend too much to the antis, because realistically they will not be happy until everything is stopped. They want the dog racing stopped, next it’s horse racing and the next thing is probably shooting and fishing.

“Horse racing is a great sport with fantastic camaraderie, so why should you give in to a handful of people? We should be proud of our racing industry, which is very clean. We need to paint the positive subjects about how the horses are treated and looked after.

“There are thousands of horses in training here in Ireland and they may as well be in the Gresham Hotel the way they’re looked after.”