JOHN ‘Shark’ Hanlon is sitting down on Tuesday and telling his own story about Barry Geraghty, just for the week that’s in it.

In 2011 he booked the Meath man to ride Alfa Beat in the Kerry National. He was driving down to Listowel on the day of the race when he got a call from Geraghty.

“It’s raining down here, Shark.”

The one thing Alfa Beat didn’t want was rain. Hanlon knew it and Geraghty especially knew it, having won the race with the very same horse when he was trained by Charles Byrnes the previous year. That was on good ground and the ground at Listowel was soft to heavy now. Alfa Beat was also 11lbs higher in the weights and he was drifting out in the betting all morning.

“Well, what are you thinking about doing on him?” Shark asked.

“Winning,” Geraghty replied.

He took the horse wide off the rail for the whole three-mile trip, making it a longer way around but avoiding the deepest ground on the track. The pair took it up and the fifth last and were never passed, obliging at 20/1.

“That was Barry for you though,” Hanlon says. “He had this cockniness, this confidence. The only time he cared about being in front was at the winning line. He was an unreal rider and he gave Alfa Beat a brilliant ride. That was a great day and I’ll tell you, we had a great night as well. We all didn’t get to bed until the early hours.”

That was nearly 10 years ago now and a lot of water has gone under the bridge since. It was a big day for Hanlon, seen as he’d only taken out his training licence five years before it, but there were lots of big days in the years before and after.

Luska Lad was a multiple Grade 2 winner, Truckers Delight won big handicaps at big meetings and Hidden Cyclone trumped them all. He was a multiple Grade 2 winner and Ryanair Chase runner-up. He won 17 races in all and collected over half a million in prize money, having cost just €21,000.

“That’s the difference between now and then,” Hanlon says. “The likes of Hidden Cyclone and Luska Lad, you could get them for 20 grand, but if you were buying them now, they’d be 50 grand.

“Maybe this year, they’ll be back towards 20 grand. It’s going to be a funny year.”

Opportunity

Crisis can often breed opportunity and if the lockdown did anything, it gave Hanlon time to weigh up the situation. For the last few years he has swayed towards the point-to-point selling game, a market that has become seriously lucrative.

In that game, one good horse can make a year but it means Hanlon has had to forego quality in his own stock for the track. That might be about to change this year.

He explains: “I’ve a few nice point-to-pointers and I’m going to try and keep them and get owners into them. I want to get back at the game more. I changed things a couple of years ago, deciding to sell my point-to-pointers but I’m hoping to get owners back into the yard. We want to have more winners.

“I have some very nice four-year-olds. I’ll be working hard to get new owners for them. If they stay in the yard all the better and if they sell and they leave the yard, then that’s fine.

“The point-to-point horses run my yard really. There is not a lot of money in training horses and I think a lot of people would agree with that. When you’re trying to compete with the likes of Gordon Elliott, Henry de Bromhead, Willie Mullins, Jessica Harrington, it’s not simple.

“A lot of owners want to go to those big yards but I just think that might change a small bit this year. Talking to people, I think the smaller trainers have more horses than they usually have now. I’m keeping my head up and I think if there are more owners to be got this year, the smaller yards just might get them.”

Hanlon’s Bagenalstown base is in the middle of a triangle of three of the most recognised trainers in the world – Joseph O’Brien, Jim Bolger and Willie Mullins – but time is a great test and this is his 15th season in operation.

He is more than happy to adopt the small-yard-big-results approach, because training huge numbers of horses has never appealed to him.

“I have 40 or 50 horses here between the National Hunt and the point-to-point yard. For any one trainer to handle 200 horses, I don’t know how they do it. I don’t know how Willie, Joseph or Gordon handle 300 horses, I just don’t know how it’s done.

“If you have a small yard, you have more time for your owners. I work my horses on a Tuesday and a Saturday and I do be delighted to see an owner ringing me on a Friday evening and say I’ll be up tomorrow to see the horse work. I love that. A lot of places don’t like that, but I do. You get to know people well, and it ends up that they’re more of a friend than an owner.

“Listen, I just couldn’t handle any more horses than I already have. I wanted to keep my numbers from 60 down, I don’t want any more than that. I like having my 20-25 National Hunt horses and the rest point-to-point horses but I’d be hoping this year that I could get the National Hunt/flat horses up to 35 and maybe have 25 pointers. That would be ideal.”

Hanlon is upbeat and speaking positively. Since racing resumed he says he’s had three winners, three seconds and three thirds. His horses are running well and he’s delighted for the owners that stuck by him, showed patience when there was no racing.

Hidden Cyclone and Brian Hayes \Healy Racing

Lockdown

This is the sun shining after an almighty storm but while things are better now, there is no getting away from how bleak things looked during lockdown.

“It was a disaster for me,” he asserts. “I have summer horses and we had to let them all back out in the field and only kept some ticking over. The horses I have won with in the last month or so, they were all ready to run when I came back from Cheltenham in March. It’s no one’s fault, it’s just the way the thing is. The point-to-point scene just went completely dead, no racing, no horses sold, no anything.

“We tried to keep on staff but we couldn’t afford to keep everyone on. In fairness, my owners were very good. They kept paying away and they were very patient, which takes the pressure off a little. We tried to look after them with the price of training as much as we could. My partner Rachel rode out seven or eight lots a day and so did my son Paddy.

“You were always hoping that you’d get back racing. Then I heard that the flat was coming back, and the National Hunt wasn’t coming back for two months and I got very upset then.

“I spoke to Brian Kavanagh and in fairness to him, he guaranteed me a lot of things and they all came through so I have to praise him for all that he did for racing. I think he was very good.

“The biggest thing you’d be afraid of now, and I’m more afraid of it than I’ve ever been is that we get a second dose of this and the whole thing locks down again. If that happens, it will wipe out a lot of people out of racing.

“People are after coping with this, the owners especially, up until now, but imagine the whole thing was set back and the owners were told they won’t have a runner for another three months. Guys won’t be able to afford it, their own businesses will be affected as well. You take the publicans at the moment. There are a lot of publicans with syndicates and with horses in yards, and I’d say if we got another shot of this Covid-19, that it wouldn’t be good at all.”

The full effect of Covid-19 on racing is unknown as of yet but many believe we’re just at the tip of the iceberg. Naturally, Hanlon is hugely in favour of any support that can be given to smaller yards. He’s a huge fan of initiatives like the Red Mills Irish EBF Auction Series and the Weatherybys ITBA National Hunt Fillies Bonus.

“The series races are a great thing,” he says. “They are the saviour of a lot of small yards at the moment. I think for racing, the small people have to be kept in and races have to be made for them. There are a lot of things there that could be done, the likes of a trainer who has only trained four or five winners this year - put a race on once a month restricted for those trainers. I think there is a little opportunity there.

“The mares’ bonus is brilliant. I have a grand mare there called Dime A Dozen.

Dime A Dozen has been a good mare for Hanlon and will be one for Galway next week \Healy Racing

“I had her qualified for the mares bonus and when I bought her to sell her on to her current owners, I was able to say to them, ‘lads, she’ll win her mares bumper, she’ll win her mares maiden hurdle, she’ll win her mares beginners chase and it’s €5,000 a go so that’s an extra €15,000. That’s what sold the mare for me and she has won her mares’ bumper, her mares’ maiden hurdle and was second in her beginners chase last week. These bonuses are a huge help.

“If the big people take over, they will put all the small lads out of business. It’s the same as any big shops, if they get too big the small businesses around the town will be gone and it’s the same with horse racing. I think it’s very important that the small people stay going.”

Social

While the landscape is ever changing, Hanlon has always stayed true to the social aspect of the game, the value of going somewhere to meet someone, anyone. The story of how he got to train Alfa Beat was one of coincidence, being at the right place at the right time.

“I’d say over the last few years, there is no National Hunt sale that I wasn’t at. It’s a kind of work in progress for me to be at these sales and meet these people.

“I go to the Barbury point-to-point over in England a lot. It’s an Irish-English challenge and I have been invited over for the last few years and we’ve had winners. It’s a selling market for me.

“I get talking to people, a lot of the point-to-point people are there, and they come to me after having a winner or a second or third and I sell the horses to them. Then six months down the road, if they want another horse, they might ring me and go again.

“What sells yourself is when you sell winners. Posh Trish won a point-to-point for me and she went on and did very well for Paul Nicholls and won five in a row.

“It’s about building up your own reputation and everyone knows that when I go to the sales with horses, they’re all for sale. I don’t shout big numbers, I just try to get them sold, get them out there and try to get people to come back to me again.”

Blackmore

Shark’s reputation with his racehorses is very much intact, having shown time again he can produce and train a good horse. It’s very much worth noting the part he played in the burgeoning of Rachael Blackmore’s career as well, having given her a job and put her up on horses on the track.

Hanlon talks about her with great affection, in true admiration of the hard work he saw first hand and which has taken her up to the very top of her profession.

“I’ve nothing but only praise for Rachael, she is part of the family here,” he says.

“She always worked very, very hard. I’d love for young people to follow Rachael’s lead. A lot of the young people don’t want to work. There is many a time Rachael would stay here until 6:00pm and she could come in at 6:00am.

“I’ll never forget, we were going racing on what turned into a very hot day, in the middle of April one year, and we had horses gone out in the field and they had rugs on them. We met Rachael at the races and she said to me: ‘John I was passing by the main road and it was boiling, so I went in and took the rugs off the horses in the field.’

“She had the brain in her head and the willingness to go and do that. She is just very dedicated. I had Brian Hayes here at the time and he was very good as well. They’re partners now. They were two very, very solid workers.

“Last year she was riding out here once a week but she’s got busier lately and it’s a case of whenever she can. But If I asked her to ride a horse, without doubt she would. She knows I wouldn’t put her up on a horse that I didn’t think had a chance.”

With a bit of luck that type of horse is going to be more prevalent for Shark Hanlon this year.

“Up to now if I have a good horse I’m looking to Gordon or Joseph or Willie to come in and buy him off me. But I think I’ll have a crack at trying to keep more horses in the yard this year.

“Of course it all depends on if I can get the owners, and if I can’t they’ll be sold on. But with a bit of luck we’ll keep a few in the yard and have a right go.”

Sharks don’t swim backwards and this one isn’t intending to either.