AS assistant trainer to my father, I look after the entries and race planning, as well as dealing with the media. I do enjoy picking out races and all that, but I definitely get much more of a kick out of it when the plan works out.

With a restricted licence, we only have a handful of horses in training at any one time, but this season has been brilliant for us.

Champagne Kid’s win at Punchestown last weekend meant that all three horses that are returned in training have now been winners this year.

Our yard is located just three miles outside of Newry. My father, Paddy, would have been involved with breeding, pre-training and breaking young horses. He always wanted to train and, in 2003, we moved from our old place to the stables where we are now based.

Four years later, he put in gallops and in 2007 he got a restricted licence. Unfortunately, that period of time coincided with the demise of the Celtic Tiger. He probably couldn’t have picked a worse time to start training horses!

Things improve

It took a couple of years for things to improve, but around 2010 it began to look up. Tear Drops won two bumpers in Wexford and Aupcharlie won his bumper in Naas before going on to finish third in the Cheltenham bumper. He was later sold to Willie Mullins.

I would only have been around 10 or 11 at the time and wasn’t really interested in racing at all. I think the bug was probably always there, but it was just hiding. When I was younger, I had ridden ponies at home and took a keen interest in pedigrees. I could list off all the mares, what they were by and such.

I have a disability, Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, which causes skeletal and heart muscle weakness. It gets worse over time and has now reached the stage where I am confined to a wheelchair.

Having to give up riding, for a few years I forgot about the horses and was more interested in watching soccer and Gaelic on television. Around 2016/17, my father trained a mare called Hello Sweetie to win five races. I think she was the one that got me back into racing to be honest. I would have started looking at things like weights, ratings, ground and trip for the first time.

After school, I went on to college in Dundalk. When I finished, I came home and started to help my father. I had been doing a bit of race planning even while I was in college, but since then I have been at it full-time.

When it comes to dealing with the media, I also do most of the talking! I am always looking up new schemes and opportunities for our horses, be that auction races, ITBA-sponsored races or races confined to mares. We would run horses in England if they suited us too, so I keep a close eye on BHA races too.

Small Bucks won a handicap hurdle at Cork in July, before Casterly Rock won his bumper at the Listowel Festival. Champagne Kid had won his bumper at Listowel last year and finished third over hurdles there in September. He was very good when winning his maiden hurdle at Punchestown last week.

Nice quality

I think we are lucky at the moment, in that we have a nice quality of big horse. They are very easy to do anything with and my father never misses anything. He is putting more time and work into it than he ever did.

Our head girl, Elaine Keatings, keeps the place running. She is brilliant and is on top of everything. Thomas Kileff, who rode a point-to-point winner last weekend, comes in and rides out every day. He is an important part of our recent success. We work the horses at John Kidd’s gallop near Loughbrickland and take them to Skyrne to sharpen them up before races. We also take them down to the beach near Bettystown.

My father knows exactly what he has and isn’t afraid to go to the bigger tracks or run at weekends. We have some great people ride work for us. Paddy O’Brien, Eoghan Finegan, Neil Gault, Aileen O’Sullivan and Finn Tegetmeier would meet my father at the gallops.

Cheltenham winners

My father bred two Cheltenham winners, Salsify and The Druids Nephew. He also bred and trained Aupcharlie to finish third in the bumper at the Festival.

On the flat, he sold Aesterius to Archie Watson as a foal for 52,000gns; he later went on to win listed, Group 3 and Group 2 races and is at stud in England. While we would never turn down a nice horse to train, I think my father is more into breeding and caring for horses. It’s what he has done all his life and he is good at it.

Casterly Rock will be our next runner when he makes his hurdling debut at Fairyhouse on Saturday. We haven’t made any plans for him beyond that. Let’s just get that out of the way first.

Champagne Kid will run in a handicap hurdle at Leopardstown over Christmas. Small Bucks is on a break until the new year, so we only have two in training right now. We also have a couple of nice young horses at home by Vadamos and Idaho.

Our best-ever season has been four winners, so with three on the board already, the ambition for the coming months would be to better that by reaching five.

Sean was in conversation with John O’Riordan