BRITISH trainer Ben Pauling will be heading to Punchestown next week without the pressure of a big runner, determined to enjoy himself and hoping to break his Irish duck with a winner in a couple of the lesser events.

In 12 months’ time, things could be very different, given that his star novice chasers, the sidelined The Jukebox Man and the equally likeable Handstands, will by then have graduated to open company.

For the moment, though, Pauling is relishing the opportunity to come to Co Kildare with just a pair of handicap contenders. One, Lanesborough, has the distinct scent of a plot horse. The other, the mischievously-named Bad, is a French import who looked fated never to fulfil the talent that he had exhibited right from his very first start for Pauling, only to snap a run of near-misses and hard luck stories with back-to-back triumphs in valuable Kempton handicap chases.

“We always try and go over to Punchestown with a few but this year we’re not going with quite as many as I might have hoped early season,” Pauling admits.

“We’ve long planned to take Lanesborough, who runs in the very attractive and well thought-out Albert Bartlett Triple Crown Series Final, which is the second race on Tuesday.”

Run for the first time last season, the race in question is a €100,000 two and a half mile novice handicap hurdle for horses rated 0-120 which have finished in the first five in one of 12 qualifying heats. Bred in Ireland by Danny Doran and placed in a pair of points for Colin Bowe, Lanesborough finished runner-up in one of six British qualifiers, at Chepstow in January, before getting off the mark at the fifth attempt under rules with a comfortable five-length triumph at Warwick the following month.

Room for movement

“Lanesborough is a horse that we bought from the Irish point-to-point field,” Pauling says. “He has progressed nicely and I just feel that there’s a fair bit of room for movement in his handicap mark. It’s a very good prize to be aiming for and we’re going to go and give it our best shot.”

“Having the opportunity to land a 100 grand pot with a horse rated 110 or 116 - those races simply don’t exist. So, it’s a very attractive event, we’ve targeted it all season and hopefully he can be competitive.

“He had to go to Chepstow to get qualified and then we needed a run in between and I’d rather he went there full of confidence rather than with a few more pounds in hand. But he won nicely at Warwick that day and I think it was a decent race. We weren’t overly fussed by running him again afterwards and going up in the handicap.”

“He’s a syndicate horse, owned by eight or 10 of my mates, and I think that all but one of them is making the journey over. So, it should be great fun, and if he won, I’d say that they might have a celebration or two!”

Owned by David Howden, Bad began his time with Pauling with a certain amount of fanfare, backed down to second favouritism for the Fred Winter at the 2023 Cheltenham Festival, before finishing in the frame in a number of other high-profile handicap hurdles the following season. Yet it was only at Kempton this February, after Pauling had landed the Grade 2 Adonis Juvenile Hurdle with Mambonumberfive earlier on the card, that he got his head in front for the first time in Britain, and he followed up at the same venue three weeks later.

“Bad is a horse who ran in the Topham Trophy over the Grand National fences the other day, and I thought that would be the end of his season. But he’s come out of the race very well and there’s every chance we might put him on the lorry for the Grade 3 handicap chase [over two miles, five furlongs, now known as the Colm Quinn BMW Handicap] on Wednesday.

“He likes going right-handed and if he turns up and puts his best foot forward he’ll have a squeak as well.”

Yard favourite

“Bad is something of a yard favourite. He’s been here a little while now and everyone seems to like him. He’s got a great way about him and does everything you ask of him.

“He’s always been impressive at home, so we’ve always had faith in him but even we were starting to lose a little bit of that faith until he came up trumps this season in a couple of decent handicaps. Ability is not his problem, it’s keeping him sweet in his brain.”

Aware that the 41-year-old is Gloucestershire-born-and-bred and lives a mere 10 miles away from Cheltenham Racecourse, I don’t even bother asking Pauling which fixture he regards as the pinnacle of National Hunt Racing. Yet, despite his understandable Cheltenham bias, he still has nothing but praise for Ireland’s biggest jumping jamboree.

“Punchestown has its own charm, similar to Aintree,” he says. “They have a sort of end-of-season feel and a party atmosphere. In particular, Punchestown has this incredibly relaxed nature.

“Everybody just walks around everywhere, there’s no differentiation between enclosures. It’s always lovely to go over there for a few days and catch up with people, we have a brilliant time.”

The season that is about to draw to a close is one that started off strongly for Pauling but has ended up fizzling out. From the moment that The Jukebox Man burst onto the scene with a spine-tingling chasing debut at Newbury at the end of November until that Adonis success three months later, he racked up six graded race victories, not to mention Fiercely Proud and Henry’s Friend grabbing their share of glory in a pair of big handicaps.

Grade 1 drought

Even more consequentially, Pauling broke his near eight-year Grade 1 drought when The Jukebox Man lifted the Kauto Star Novices’ Chase on St Stephen’s Day and Handstands was on hand to extend that top level tally in the Scilly Isles Novices’ Chase five weeks later.

But The Jukebox Man was laid low with an injury in late January and, having bypassed Cheltenham to concentrate on Aintree, Handstands blew out in the Mildmay Novices’ Chase. Having fought so hard to break into the top 10 of the British trainers’ championship for the first time a year previously, Pauling is set to finish 11th or 12th this time around.

Asked for his assessment of the campaign, he replies: “It was another good season. I wouldn’t put it down as exceptional but any season where you win a couple of Grade 1s is going to be fondly remembered.

“We’ve also had plenty of Grade 2 and listed winners. We’ll probably end up with around 70 winners and that’s a decent total, but I think we’ve got the quality and the ability to rattle a few more off next year.

“There’s been quite a few bugs and snotty noses lurking, nothing of any significance, but we’ve been paddling quite hard beneath the surface to keep the show on the road.

“One positive thing I would say is that, when their big days have come around, most of the horses have run well and hit the target. That’s been the satisfying part. But we’ve come out of it without a Cheltenham or Aintree winner, which is always a bit of a shame.

“At the same time you can’t win there every year and you don’t dwell on it, you look forward to the future and go again.

Plenty more time

“Most of my top horses have got plenty more time in front of them. We had a very nice group of novice chasers this year, I think as good as anyone. Next season, with the wind behind us, horses like Handstands and The Jukebox Man, they could be lining up in Ryanairs and Gold Cups and things like that and it takes a long time to get a horse to that stage. So hopefully they stay sound and get there in one piece.

“It is very exciting having horses of this calibre. The Jukebox Man’s season was cut short but he’s already done all his walker work and he’s turned out in the field daily now, looking a million dollars, so I don’t think that his injury is going to come back to haunt him.

“I think Handstands is just as good. Unfortunately, he wasn’t quite right at Aintree. He got hampered, but he already looked beaten by then and I just don’t think that he was on his ‘A Game’ that day.

“The form of his Scilly Isles victory is very good, Jango Baie came out of it and nearly managed to pull a Grade 1 double.

“I just couldn’t be prouder of those two horses. They’ve run some massive races and, between them, they ran seven times and won five, two Grade 1s and three Grade 2s.

The duo were both acquired after beginning their careers racing between the flags in Ireland, a talent pool which Pauling has come to rely upon.

Irish point-to-points

“I have relationships with lots of Irish point-to-point trainers, though some I seem to have more luck with than others. Aidan Fitzgerald is a fellow I trust and enjoy working with and he works closely with some of my owners.

“I’d also mention Paddy Turley, who has been a very lucky shop for us. The list goes on. Mattie Flynn, James Doyle, we’ve had a lot of luck with them too.

“As far as keeping tabs on Irish points, my agent, Jerry McGrath, spends a lot of time over there watching the racing at the weekends and we try to deal on horses privately as well as through the sales.

“I do feel that it’s a very good avenue to explore in the search for the next generation of top class horses.”

The development which has enabled Pauling to take his place at the top table of Britain’s training fraternity is his move from Bourton Hill Farm, where he first took out a licence in 2013 with just eight horses after six years working as assistant to Nicky Henderson, to a new purpose-built state-of the-art facility five miles away at Naunton Downs Golf Club.

The two yards were so close together that, come moving day, the most efficient removals system for their equine inmates was to hack them from one property to the other.

“We train somewhere between 110 and 125 horses at any one time,” Pauling reports. “We’ve 94 boxes in the new yard so it’s a bit of a rotational system, some will always be convalescing or being broken in. We built a yard with everything you need, gallops, schooling lanes, the works.

Opportunity

“It’s hard to believe that we have been here for three years now. It has transformed our ability to keep the horses in peak health because, even when you do pick up a little bit of a snotty nose or whatever at the racecourse, they shake it off very quickly because the ventilation and the light are both very good. It has given us the opportunity to compete at the top.”

The new yard, which took fully 16 months to build from scratch, has “definitely” lived up to its proprietor’s expectations.

“I think that the way the barns are designed is pretty special,” Pauling enthuses. “They seem incredibly healthy and, ultimately, that’s the key to being successful. I have been around various yards in Britain and Ireland looking at how other people do things and pieced it together to the best of my ability to create something that we think works well.

“Thirty of my horses have access to outdoor pens permanently, day and night, and all of the others have windows in the back of their stables, so have the ability to look out the back, which is a way of keeping them interested and relaxed.

“There is a very peaceful, quiet atmosphere. The horses are very settled and I think that’s really important.”

Almost inevitably in the current climate, our conversation turns to the Mullins-Skelton duel for the British trainers’ championship. Dan Skelton’s yard is only 25 miles north of Naunton Downs, the pair were born within 18 months of each other and set out on their training careers within weeks of each other, so it is interesting to get Pauling’s take on his rival’s progress.

“I get on incredibly well with Dan and always have done,” Pauling asserts. “I don’t really compare myself with him as we are running two very different operations.

“Dan would probably train twice as many horses as me and I don’t think that’s necessarily a route that I would like to go down.

“I don’t think that I’d ever want to train more than 200 horses. But, to be competitive these days, you’ve got to have a decent number and that’s what we’ve got.”

“I’m super-impressed with how Dan’s done this season. How can you not be? He set his goal at the start of season to try to win the championship and, even if he doesn’t manage it, people will have sat up and realised just how serious he is about trying to win it.

Joy to watch

“Of course, we’re all exceptionally competitive people and we want to compete and want to win. It’s been a joy to watch and I think he’s doing brilliantly. I’m spurred on by Dan just as I am spurred on by anyone’s success and I want to beat him.”

There is no doubt that Pauling is a coming force and, having started small, his determination to reach the top is plain for all to see.

Analysing his own career, he says: “I’m a farmer’s son. I grew up in the Cotswolds. I rode from a very young age. I wasn’t overly fussed by the riding until I was about 11 and then it became a massive part of my life and I became incredibly driven by eventing and team chasing and point-to-pointing.

“My parents always enjoyed their racing and Dad trained a few pointers, but that was as far as it went.”

“Horses get under my skin and I think that I have a way with them which is pretty special. I am driven by them, I love everything about what they are and what they can achieve, and I like trying to find what we can eke out of every horse.

“It’s an industry that I love and enjoy. My job is not without its trials and tribulations and stresses and strains, but that doesn’t mean I’m about to jump ship and try something else.”