galway

MONDAY, JULY 25TH

John Thomas.

WHAT can you say? For over three years John, Caroline, Dylan, Harry and Olivia were asked to carry a cross by our Lord, one which most of us just could not contemplete. John has always been close to our family and himself and Liam would be best pals, so along with everyone else in the racing community we are really feeling his passing.

Just typing these words makes me cry so I want to tell ye a few funny yarns about the man. Someone asked me the other day how would I describe him. “Very easily,” I told them. “If you want your son to grow up like someone, then you want him to grow up like John Thomas.”

KNOCK

We went to Sligo one summer’s evening some years back and, like every other journey with him, you didn’t feel the miles clocking up. Of course, the first thing he did getting into the car was eff and blind me for heading up the road so early, but then he eased off when I told him I wanted to stop off in Knock to say a few prayers and gather a few bottles of holy water.

Now any of you who do a lot of driving might remember back in the day we all had a ‘speed radar’ detector sitting on the dash of the car. This was pre-internet and you asked anyone that was visiting America to bring one back. Honestly, I don’t really know if they worked but mine used to beep a fair bit so I kind of thought it was a help in slowing down ahead of the speed traps.

On arrival to Sligo, John Thomas gave this little machine his approval and informed me that the next time Bolger (Enda) was heading to the States that he would ask him to bring him one back. We had a enjoyable day at the races but John was out of luck in the bumper so was a touch cranky and as we jumped into the car to head home, he reached under the seat and placed the detector on the dash, just as we were driving out onto the road under the watchful eye of the Garda that was directing the traffic.

Sure, we thought nothing of it, but didn’t the Garda radio a colleague of his about 10 miles further down the road who duly stepped out and pulled us over. I pulled the detector off the dash and placed it in hide and rolled down the window to hear the Garda shouting at me “I know you have a radar detector, where is it?” I was trying my best to look innocent and be polite to the Garda, but all I can hear in my other ear is John Thomas – “ah for f**k sake, we are going to be locked up now, you are some bollix Healy.”

Sure I started to laugh and this enraged the Garda even more. Out of the car he made us get and searches it as if he was looking for drugs. No luck though. “Open the boot,” he shouts. He goes through the camera bag, no luck. Then he grabs John Thomas’s riding bag. “Hi, what the f**k are you going through that for, sure that’s my gear bag!”

“I have reason to believe ye have hidden a radar dectector,” he says. “Listen boy, I came all the way up here to ride a yak in the bumper and I didn’t even get paid and now you are going to make us get home even later. Would you ever go and catch real criminals!”

This only made our man more determined to find it and after looking for a further 20 minutes he finally gave up and informed us that he knew the cars and plates that we both drove and from now on every time we drove into Co Sligo he would watch us, and if we stepped out of line he would see us done. I must admit, I was relieved as I drove off down the road not to have been caught and I nearly crashed the car when your man beside me mutters - “Now, aren’t you lucky I made you stop off in Knock...”

BLAGGARD

The point-to-points were always great craic with him.

When you think back now you can see him conducting the whole day like an orchestra – the banter in the weigh tent, blaggarding everyone, throwing a few f**ks into a young lad to make him improve himself, giving trainers like Danny O’Connell stick by telling them that if their horses didn’t jump better he wouldn’t ride them. Just making everyone smile and making their day better just by running into him.

Watching him in action was just poetry in motion. I can go back to the era of Ted Walsh, Nicky Dee, John Queally, Timmy O’Callaghan. On up to the Costelloes, Enda Bolger, Roger Hurley, John Berry, Paddy Graffin and Tony Martin. Next generation of Stormin Norman, Adrian Maguire and Davy Russell, to the present boys of Derek O’Connor and Jamie Codd. All geniuses at their trade, but I think they all would agree that John just had that something extra.

Many was the horrible wet dirty day we had in a field being battered by the elements, but you drove out in sheer delight just having witnessed something extraordinary from John Thomas, something special to lift one past the line.

I was at Askeaton point-to-point one day and photographed him parting company at the final fence. “You ok?” I asked him, as I looked at him lying on the ground. “I’ll be fine, I just dislocated my shoulder,” he replied. With that he gets up and jumps into the ambulance which is to bring him to hospital, and tells me to take care of his gear.

A couple of hours later he rings, “Where’s my gear?” I replied: “I will meet you at the hospital in half an hour.”

“For what, I’m at home you eejit. Sure I went in the ambulance because they would see me quicker and I wanted to get back to do the horses this evening,” he said.

I mean, what can you say about that. The mental toughness of dislocating his shoulder, getting it put back in and then the attitude of having to get his jobs done.

TOUGH

Another day himself and Bolger were out schooling some young horses over banks and they came to a massive drain. “You go first,” says Bolger. “No, you go first,” replies John. This went on for about two minutes before John Thomas finally relents and sets off, only to end up head over heels into about two foot of water and Bolger then suffers the same fate. With the two of them drowned wet and having to set off after the two loose horses, John turns to Bolger and mutters “Are you f*****g happy now!”

Bolger also brought John to a Chinese restaurant for the first time, the Jasmine in Limerick. Now John wouldn’t be described as a cultured grubber and he decided to order the duck. The kitchen were out of duck, so had to go and get some, which meant a delay of an hour. Finally, when the waiter is bringing it to the table, doesn’t he trip and the duck goes flying. “That’s the last time you will catch me in one of those places,” was our man’s verdict!!

Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam dílis.