THERE are horses for courses, and when it comes to Galway, there are certain trainers that spring to mind too. Noel Meade is right up there, and it’s not until he lists off his victories that I truly understand his accomplishments.

“We had great years, with plenty of smaller winners in between,” Meade recalls on another journey west, to Ballinrobe. “At this stage, I think I’ve been lucky enough to win all the big ones, bar one. We won the amateur race five times, I think, and the race on Tuesday [now Colm Quinn BMW Mile], three times, maybe four.

“The Plate twice, the Hurdle three times, and the one on the Friday [Guinness Handicap] a good few times. We won the big hurdle [Listed BoyleSports Handicap Hurdle] on the Saturday twice, and the only race I haven’t won is the seven-furlong race [Ahonoora Handicap] on the Sunday.”

Ballybritt was an important platform relatively early in Meade’s career, the proud Meath man continues. “Galway was very good to us in the late 70s and early 80s,” he says. “We had a couple of very good horses that loved fast ground and were great Galway horses. Pinch Hitter and Steel Duke were real Galway specialists.”

Pinch Hitter won back-to-back McDonagh Handicaps (now known as the Colm BMW Mile) in 1981 and 1982, and after his second success, he remarkably landed the Galway Hurdle that same week. The following year, he was narrowly denied a hat-trick in the flat feature, but gained redemption with his second consecutive Galway Hurdle.

Steel Duke was another Galway favourite, while his other notable wins included a Saval Beg Stakes. Meade, like his early flagbearers, was no one-trick pony.

In fact, the first horse to put him on the map was a sprinter. Sweet Mint won the 1978 Cork and Orrery Stakes, now known as the Queen Elizabeth II Jubilee Stakes, a first winner and first runner for Meade at Royal Ascot. “I thought it was easy at the time,” Meade admits. “It wasn’t quite as easy as I thought.”

Everyone’s a winner

The Galway Races, though, gave Meade another chance to prove his worth, and it remains a meeting where many trainers can showcase their talents. “It gives the smaller trainer a chance to come and be on the big stage at a festival,” Meade explains. “It’s unlike any other festival like Punchestown or Cheltenham or Christmas, because practically all the races are handicaps and a lot of the races on lower class races.

“I think it’s great, there’s a fabulous buzz in Galway and it’s because the ordinary person wins races in Galway, and people want to go there because of that. It has a very unique atmosphere, because there’s no sort of upstairs/downstairs in Galway. Everybody’s there together.

“It’s not easy to win there,” he continues. “Usually, horses are well handicapped going there, because there’s quite a lot of trainers that will be thinking about Galway from a long way away. Over the last number of years, the handicaps have got stronger and stronger, but they’re still handicaps.”

The craic that the meeting is known for is probably another reason why many think of Noel Meade in regards to Galway; fun would be one word many use to describe the affable trainer, along with opinionated, shrewd and talented. Speaking to Meade, the memories of past celebrations seem to be on par with the wins themselves.

“In the early days, we gave it socks,” he says. “When things were going well, I think we were out celebrating every night. The place lends itself well to that as well, because the city is not far away, and it’s a great party city, especially when the races are on.”

Asked if one particular time stood out, Meade replies: “Every year Pinch Hitter won down there. He had great owners; Finbarr Cahill, who has been a pal of mine all his life, would enjoy the celebrations, as did we all. To be honest with you, I think I might be better not talking about some of the celebrations!

“I remember one year, we drove a lap of honour around the track after racing, sitting on the roof of the car. I suppose they were different times, you wouldn’t dream of doing things like that now. It was a bit over the top, but at the time it was a bit of fun, we were all a bit younger at that stage.”

While plenty of time has passed since then, Meade continues to train Galway winners and enjoy them as he should. Twelve months ago, Pinkerton completed a hat-trick of wins in the Galway Plate in the colours of Phily Polly, who made the most of the occasion. “We had great fun with the Pollys,” Meade says. “They really enjoyed that down there, I think they were celebrating for about three months.”

Matter of pride

As well as conquering Galway, over the years, Meade has claimed seven Champion National Hunt Trainer titles, six Cheltenham Festival victories, a Group 1 win on the flat and numerous Grade 1s. Past horses that stand out include the great Harchibald, Go Native, Aran Concerto, Nicanor and Sausalito Bay, to name just a few.

So, what does he consider his greatest achievement? “A lot of things were good but I won the trainers’ championship seven times,” he says. “You know, it was hard going.

“I’m not sure how much you enjoy it at the time, because when you’re on the hunt for a trainers’ championship, you’re under pressure all the time, and you have to keep pushing and pushing and pushing. And to be honest with you, when it’s all over, it starts again the next day, so one kind of builds into another.

“At that time, I think we won seven trainers’ championships, and we were leading trainer by winners nine times, but I think Willie beat us twice for prize money, but that was back before Willie started going as he’s going now. It was hard work and as I said, you look back on it now and you just wonder, did you really enjoy it that much? I’m not sure.”

From changing focus from the flat to the jumps and back again, Meade’s career has always been in constant motion, and rolling with the good times and the punches seems to be key to the trainer’s longevity.

“I’ve always said you can’t stand back from it,” he states. “It doesn’t matter who you are or what you are. You have to keep the foot on the pedal, because you’re a bit like a chef. He’s only as good as his last meal, and you’re really only as good as your last winner.

“You can go downhill very, very fast and over the years, we’ve seen top trainers disappear off the scene, because they took the foot off the pedal a little bit. And the next thing is, they just fade away. You can’t afford to do that, because there’s always someone coming up behind you, and you get forgotten very quickly.”

Those without Meade’s proactive approach have not stood the test of time, it would seem. As the 74-year-old recalls: “I was speaking to a trainer at Ascot, a very good trainer who had given up training.

“I asked him why he gave up, because he was very, very successful. And he said he couldn’t take the disappointment; he couldn’t handle it when it went wrong, and it got to the point where he became afraid to run his horses. He got so conservative with them that he put himself out of business.”

Meade’s frame of mind has come in handy when it comes to his other interests, too. “I’m a big Meath fan, and we were coming back from Croke Park after the Leinster finals one day,” he remembers. “We’d played Dublin and they beat us by 11 points.

“We were standing outside the County Club, and it was a lovely, sunny day, there were seven or eight of us standing around together. Everybody was very down and out, and this fella said to me, ‘You don’t seem to be that disappointed.’ And I said, ‘Oh, Jesus, I am disappointed. The difference with me is I’m used to be disappointed. There’s not a week goes by that I don’t get beat, you have to learn to live with it.’”

Changing tack

Meade’s return to the flat after forging a strong reputation as a jumps trainer was a key example in how facing a challenge head-on maintained his professional momentum.

He explains: “I’ll tell you what happened. A couple of my very good owners passed away, and it was getting almost impossible to have enough money to buy jumping horses, they got too expensive.

“And one of my owners said to me, how about we buy a couple of yearlings, and we started off buying a few cheap yearlings. They were very lucky, and we sold them well. Then bit by bit, I started to do that and I realized that there was more of a future in that if you didn’t have the money to buy the jumpers.”

With more records broken this summer, the store sales remain challenging when buying on a budget. “Jumping horses are an unbelievable price at the moment,” Meade comments. “I used to buy about 25 of them every year, and maybe I wouldn’t have owners for them, but I’d bring them home and move them along.

“Then they started to cost too much money, and it just didn’t work, I couldn’t see a future in it. To be honest with you, it was very hard to get someone to own them and if you had them for any length of time, and as I say, if you put the number plates on them, they became worth very little, very quickly.

“With the yearlings, it’s a much different situation, because they can turn into a worldwide commodity. There are so many places for them to go, even the ordinary ones – they don’t have to be a brilliant horse to be worth quite a bit of money.”

Caught U Looking is a perfect example of both Meade’s judgement of a horse and the vibrant resale market on the flat. As a daughter of Harzand out of an unraced Mastercraftsman mare, she may not have even got many spotters to her door when unproven, but Meade and Peter Nolan both think outside the box, and gave €27,000 for her at the Goffs Autumn Yearling Sale.

Breeder Peter Kelly and his wife Sabine were key to retain some ownership, and the good-looking bay also caught the eye (hence her name) of Tally-Ho Stud’s Tony O’Callaghan, who joined the partnership. As a juvenile, she went on to win a Leopardstown maiden by five lengths and followed up in the Group 3 Weld Park Stakes.

The following season, she finished fifth in both the English and Irish Oaks, and placing in two Group 3s, before landing a listed event by four lengths. Her consistent C.V. saw her bring 1.8million guineas at the Tattersalls December Sale last year.

Modest man

Meade now works the sales with Peter Nolan, and they’re the sort of duo that you hate underbidding to, as you fear you probably missed out on a good one, and likely at a nice price. Meade, though, downplays his talent spotting abilities.

“I’d love to have the money to buy the expensive horses,” he says. “The easiest thing to do is to find the best horse in the sale. I hear people talking about, ‘Oh, he’s a great judge and he’s a great judge’. If you have enough money, you can be a great judge.”

While Meade might not talk up his own judgement, he places high importance on finding the right ammunition, for without it, trainers struggle. “There’s no secret as to how you win races,” he says.

“If you buy the best horses, you’re going to win the best races. Obviously, the more money you have to spend, the better chance you have of buying the best horses, and of winning the best races.”

On whether it’s become more difficult to source the better horses, Meade replies: “It probably is harder to buy the better ones, but having said that, the middle seems to have relaxed a little bit.

“I think it’s more of an elitist market now for the top horses, and I think that the middle market’s not as good as it was and I’d say the bottom is pure hell for the producers. Look, I suppose it was always a bit like that, but maybe it’s a bit more that way now, though.”

Considering the strong prices at the store sales, along with a widening gap between the larger and smaller jumps yards, I’m curious to know what Meade makes of the current National Hunt scene, and the proposed, and subsequently shelved, restricted races intended to help smaller trainers.

“I don’t think restricting races is the right way to be honest,” he remarks. “Nobody ever promised anybody anything in racing. I think the people who train the most winners are entitled to be running in every race. I don’t think it’s right that the likes of the top trainers are not allowed to run horses in all races.”

So, what would he propose? “Possibly, at the bigger meetings, maybe it would be no harm to have a lesser race at all those meetings; if you had one low class race at those festival meetings,” he muses.

“Maybe not every day, but at the likes of Punchestown, a lot of the smaller trainers are wiped out of them because the no ratings have gone so high. There would be a bigger field for them too.”

It goes back to what he said about the Galway Races, I suggest, and Meade agrees. “Absolutely. I call it the people’s festival.”

Different view

Flat racing’s most-discussed challenge is falling attendances, and Meade has an interesting take on the subject. “There’s a lot of talk about jump racing being this, that, and the other, but if you go to most meetings, there’s not that many more people at the jumps than there are at the flat,” he comments. “I think that’s kind of a fallacy, to be honest with you. I’d say there’s every bit as much interest in flat racing.

“I may be wrong, but if you take the first 1,000 people out, I wouldn’t think that it makes that much difference whether it’s flat or jumping, especially in Galway. I suppose the attendance is much better at Punchestown than the Curragh, but I still think there’s more to be done on a lot of the flat tracks. I’m just not altogether sure that they’re being promoted as well as they could be. I think jump racing is probably better promoted.”

Meade also suggests that falling figures are simply the new reality, given other changes in racing. He continues: “Obviously, there are the hardcore that do love the racing. But you see, we have all the races on TV now, so it’s very hard to expect to have the same attendance when you have that.

“I do think that the day of the weekday meeting is gone, it’s just a case of working through that and promoting the good days. I actually think there’s too much Sunday racing as well; I think we’d be better off cutting the Sunday racing back a bit. I think maybe three Sundays a month might be enough.”

Staffing is another negative regarding Sundays, too, Meade recognizes. “That’s one of the biggest problems of the whole lot at the moment, is staff. That’s a nightmare, really, and it’s not getting any easier, because the bigger stables have got bigger and bigger and bigger.

“Originally, when I started, if you had 100 horses that was huge. Now, you’re talking about trainers with 300, 350, or 400 horses. There are less people working in the industry now, there’s no doubt about it. It’s harder to get Irish people to do it anyway.

“I have been lucky in that my head man has been with me since the beginning, and I’ve a couple of others who have been with me an awful long time, and without them, I couldn’t work at all, because they’re like my right hand now at this stage.”

No matter their role, those who stand the test of time in racing are driven by their love of the game, and Meade is no different. “I’ve had a great time, a fabulous time,” he says.

“I’ve enjoyed every bit of it. I’m not saying it was hard work; it wasn’t because I enjoyed it so much. The worst times are when you’re coming back from the races, when horses have run bad and that happens so regular, it’s hard to take. That’s the worst end of it. I suppose that and injuries.”

Having discussed Meade’s achievements, I’m keen to know what race is top of his wishlist. “Like everyone else, good races is what I’d love to win, to be honest,” he says. “I’d love to come across another good stakes horse again. I don’t care if it’s a jumper or a flat horse, I just like good horses.

“I’m enjoying training now. At the moment, I train for a lot of people I like, and I don’t have as much pressure as I used to have.”

Jesse Evans, entered in the Galway Hurdle

First of all, the ground would have to be good for him. I think he has it all to do. He’s run in it a few times, but I just felt that maybe, in the long run, it might be the best way forward. If he got prize money, we would be delighted.

Helvic Dream, entered in the Galway Hurdle

Helvic Dream would be the opposite - he’d want it softish, or certainly a good cut in it. I think if the ground is okay, he could run in the Hurdle. I’m not altogether sure Galway will suit him that well, but having said that, it’s a huge prize, and he’s a very rateable weight, if the ground was suitable.