ARGUABLY the hottest trainer in either Britain or Ireland at the moment, Olly Murphy was born in the English Midlands. It is no exaggeration to say that he was made in Co Meath. The son of noted bloodstock agent Aiden Murphy and former trainer Anabel Murphy (nee King), Olly was always going to make a career out of racing in some form.

Yet, while paying full tribute to his parents’ ongoing role in moulding him, working alongside him and giving him the opportunity to get his training business off the ground, he has always admitted that his time spent working for Gordon Elliott on the other side of the Irish Sea was the period which underpinned his career.

“I had five fantastic seasons there,” Murphy explains. “I joined in 2012 just after he had moved from Capranny to his current yard at Cullentra and stayed until 2017, so I was there from the age of 22 to 27. I learned loads. Gordon was very, very good to me and still is. We have a great relationship.

“I had to work hard and play hard. I wouldn’t be a great drinker, but certainly I got better at it in my years out there!

“I’d like to think that I went around with my eyes open. I wasn’t actually always planning on going training, it was only in my latter years there that I thought ‘if I don’t leave soon and have a go on my own, I’ll end up living the rest of my life in Ireland and having a family here’. I said as much to Gordon when I handed my notice in.

Out on his own

“I just felt that I had to go home and try to stand on my own two feet. I was very lucky that I had a family home in the heart of Warwickshire, which was going to allow me to take a small step up the ladder in trying to get going. It was an extremely difficult thing to do, to leave, because I had the most unbelievable time there.

“It actually makes me quite emotional talking about Ireland, even to my wife, Camilla, and trying to explain the times I had over there. It was a great country to live in. I was looked after second to none. When my kids grow up, I look forward to telling them about the good years I had working for Gordon, the good horses I was associated with, topped by Tiger Roll and Don Cossack, and all those Cheltenham winners. They were special days.

“Some of the people I met there are going to be friends for life, like Ian Amond, Gordon’s assistant now, who is one of my best friends. We speak a couple of times a week. I certainly wouldn’t be where I am now if I hadn’t spent my apprenticeship working for Gordon Elliott.

“I cheer his horses on, and I’d like to think he kind of reciprocates that. Thank God we’re in different countries, so it’s very rare that we take each other on, but he usually still comes out on the right side of it when we do! Irish racing in general was very good to me, it is a country that is very close to my heart. Taking my horses over there a little bit more is something I want to try to start doing.”

When Murphy did drag himself away from Ireland, instead of getting going using his mother’s existing facilities, he decided to start afresh by copying the Cullentra set-up, in particular replicating the gallops there, even shipping in Irish sand to use on them.

Much of the reason for this was fear. As a callow 27-year-old, without even a successful riding career behind him, Murphy was petrified that he was setting himself up to fail. And if you have first-hand experience of a highly successful training operation, it makes sense to copy that system when you start out on you own.

Not rocket science

“When I came home, I was so worried that I was going to fall flat on my face, so I put the same gallop in as Gordon, fed the same feed at the same time, and had the same start time in the mornings,” Murphy admits. “To this day, my horses use the same racing bridles, they race in the same girths and I get my rugs from the same supplier. Some people were saying ‘that’s a bit over the top’, but that’s the respect I had for Gordon when I left.

“I kept everything very straightforward. I didn’t leave there thinking I was Billy Big Bollocks and was going to do something different to what Gordon Elliott did. It’s not rocket science training a racehorse. Gordon never complicated things and stuck to a system.”

Seven and a half years on and the modus operandi at Warren Chase is still very similar to Cullentra, though Murphy has made a few tweaks. Possibly the most significant is that his string now have a quiet day once a week during the season, when they just walk and trot.

Looking back on other changes since he took out a licence, Murphy muses: “I probably tried to run before I could walk for my first few years. Those good horses just don’t come around straight away and it’s taken a little bit of time.”

Those words represent a harsh self-assessment, given that he almost reached the 50-winner mark during his initial season and has made relentless progress since, pocketing a pair of Grade 1 victories along the way. The 2024-’25 season was his best ever, as he broke into the top five of the British trainers’ championship and boasted a campaign-long 25% strike rate, a figure which none of his rivals, not even Willie Mullins, could match.

Asked if that one-in-four figure (which he has maintained in the opening months of the current term) makes him proud, Murphy admits that it does while simultaneously being at pains not to get carried away by such a statistic.

Highs and lows

“Stike rate is not something that we concentrate on because we want to have a lot of runners at every level,” he says. “I do all the entries and declarations myself, though I do have a member of staff, Scott Salkeld, to help me with race planning and analysis and he is a big help and is great to bounce ideas off.

“Even at 25%, I’m still having to make three phone calls out of every four to an owner explaining how their horse got beat, albeit those calls can still be positive.

“It’s an amazing game. You can be flying high, then your head girl can give you a ring and say a horse has done a tendon or can’t run tomorrow or has got a snotty nose and all of a sudden it’s panic stations. You’ve just got to keep level and take the highs with the lows.”

Having started with just a dozen under his tutelage, Murphy is now the proprietor of a burgeoning 140-box operation, and that number doesn’t take into account the young stock housed elsewhere.

“You can very easily get too big too quick,” he admits. “We have got horses in pre-training yards and all my unraced three-year-olds are over with Michael Kennedy, brother of Gordon’s stable jockey Jack Kennedy, down in Inishannon in Co Cork. They all get a good education there, one or two of them run in a point-to-point, the rest go round in schooling races and have a school around the point-to-point track before coming back to me the following spring.

“I think my yard stays a lot healthier when the three-year-olds aren’t about. There’s not as much ringworm about and not as many coughs and splutters that those young horses can bring.

“Michael’s actually renting a yard off my father’s family in Inishannon and Paddy, Jack’s other brother, does all the breaking in when they come from the sales up in Kildangan. So they’re a big part of my team.

“I remember going racing at Clonmel when Jack had his very first ride on a horse called Taglietelle [back in 2015]. It’s been great watching him mature from when I was working at Gordon’s to where he is now. He’s got an unbelievable mind on him, given the amount of injuries he’s had to keep coming back in the manner he does.”

While on the subject of jockeys, a huge part of the yard’s success of late has been down to the exceptional form of stable jockey Sean Bowen, who became champion jockey for the first time last season and, injury notwithstanding, is already in an almost impregnable position in the current title race.

Last weekend’s high profile double for Warren Chase, courtesy of Strong Leader in the Grade 2 bet365 Hurdle at Wetherby and Resplendent Grey in the Colin Parker Memorial Chase at Carlisle, owed much to a pair of power-packed Bowen rides after looking to have plenty to do on landing over the last obstacle.

Murphy had already proved himself to be a highly engaging interviewee. But it was only when I asked him about Bowen that he really hit his stride.

“It will probably amaze a lot of people when I tell you that Sean’s best qualities are actually out of the saddle. We’re working in a part of the entertainment industry where clients have racehorses for a hobby. We can all get very disappointed after a race and he’s extremely good with owners. His post-match analysis is second to none. He talks a lot of sense. And he’s a big team player.

Top jockey

“He’s a massive asset to me in the saddle as well, of course. His strength, determination and racing brain is top notch. If a horse can’t win, he doesn’t knock them about, he saves them for the next day. He looks after these young horses for further down the line.

“I’d like to think that I bring the best out of Sean as a jockey and he brings the best out of me as a trainer. I don’t know if we’ve ever had a cross word, albeit I disagree with the odd thing he does and he disagrees with the odd thing I do.

“Sandown in April was extra special. My team going down there and us all seeing him collect his first riders’ championship trophy. Then topping it off by landing the bet365 Gold Cup together was absolutely magic.”

Asked to comment on some good judges comparing Bowen with A.P. McCoy, Murphy concludes: “To even be mentioned in the same breath as A.P. is a credit to Sean and what he’s doing at the moment. I’m loving working with him.”

The upcoming Coral Gold Cup meeting at Newbury at the end of the month promises to be a big moment for the stable, as not only is Resplendent Grey set to go for the headline race, Strong Leader is likely to defend his crown in the Grade 2 Long Distance Hurdle while a trio of the yard’s best youngsters in Alnilam, Booster Bob and Indeevar Bleu are in line to contest three other prestigious events in the shape of the John Francome Novice Chase, the Peter O’Sullevan Handicap Chase and the Gerry Fielden Hurdle.

Resplendent Grey and Sean Bowen winning last season's bet365 Gold Cup \ Healy Racing

Murphy, who got married last year and now has four-month-old baby Max to distract him from the pressure-cooker environment of running a top National Hunt yard, is determined not to get carried away and keep things in perspective should on-track performances fall below expectation.

Reality checks

“Max certainly makes you have a reality check when you have a bad day at the races you come back to a newborn in the house,” he asserts. “I think that’s done me the world of good, as I could be a fella that would sulk a little. I don’t get a chance to do that anymore.

“I’ve never shied away from the fact that I’m in a privileged position, I’m training in a fantastic set up at my family home in Warwickshire, albeit we’ve had to take out loans and do X, Y and Z, like everyone else.

“I don’t have a massive rent to pay like a lot of trainers and I can only imagine the stress that puts on trainers from a financial point of view. Yet, at the same time, you can be given everything in the world and you can still not be very good at what you’re trying to do and I think we’ve shown now in the last seven years that we can train.”

Quizzed about his ambitions for the coming months, outside the obvious aim of getting a first Cheltenham Festival winner under his belt, Murphy is keen to keep things low key.

“I’d love to move up one place and finish fourth in the trainers’ championship,” he says. “I know that sounds like small steps. But it’s a list of Dan Skelton, Willie Mullins, Paul Nicholls, Nicky Henderson and Olly Murphy.

“Eight years ago I’d have had to pinch myself if you were to tell me that I was going to be put in the same bracket as any of those other four. If I could knock one of them off their perch and finish above them this year I think that’d be a big achievement.”