IT all started back in 1972 and on New Year’s Day for good measure. The Sutton Maiden Hurdle at Baldoyle was divided and the first leg was won by a five-year-old gelding, owned and ridden by Major Joe Pidcock. That gelding was the subsequent Gold Cup winner Captain Christy.

The second division was won in some style by the odds-on favourite and this was Spanner. Mrs Jackson’s son of Orchardist was ridden by Peter Russell but, most significantly, was the first training success for Dermot Weld, taking over from his father Charlie who had just retired. Spanner was to play a key part in the unfolding Weld success story, providing him with three of his four wins as a rider in the Player-Wills Amateur Handicap at Galway.

Even on day one of his new career, Weld was making the headlines and went on to record a double, riding as well as training Chevy Chase to capture the second division of the bumper. The beaten riders on that day included Harry de Bromhead, Bill McLernon, John Fowler, Mouse Morris, Noel Meade and Des McDonagh.

That year was also to see the new trainer land the first of 22 flat trainer championships (by wins) and he has also been eight times the leading trainer by prizemoney won. The last of the 22 table topping performances was shared with Aidan O’Brien.

During his years as a trainer he has set many landmarks and in 1985 he appropriately won the C L Weld Park Stakes at the now defunct Phoenix Park with Gaily Gaily, and in so doing became the first Irish trainer to saddle 100 flat winners in a calendar year.

Harzand’s success in the Dubai Duty Free Irish Derby was a third in the race for Weld, following Zagreb 20 years earlier and Grey Swallow, bred by his mother, in 2004. His seven Irish St Leger wins include four-in-a-row with Vinnie Roe and consecutive victories with Vintage Crop. The latter followed up his first win in the race with that historic success in the Melbourne Cup, the first by a trainer from the northern hemisphere.

In Ireland there is no more spiritual home for the master of Rosewell House than the Galway Festival where he has reigned supreme for more than three decades. In the City of the Tribes he is the chief.

Let us not forget either that Weld was no slouch when it came to riding winners. He shared his first amateur title with Arthur Moore in 1968 and won it outright in 1970 and 1971. He partnered winners also in South Africa, France, the USA and in Britain.

Many years after he retired from the saddle he donned his own colours at the Leopardstown Christmas meeting to ride Midsummer Gamble to a 10-length win in one of the bumpers. Among the also-rans that day were Ted Walsh, John Berry, John Queally, Micheal Halford and John Durkan.

With many honours bestowed upon him both in the world of racing and beyond, Dermot Weld is a name that resonates internationally and there are few frontiers that he has yet to conquer.