THERE are few finer craftsmen of a beautifully executed plan than Martin Brassil.

Look out into the trainer’s front garden and you will see Numbersixvalverde, still happily munching on grass at the ripe old age of 28, to find living proof of such a statement.

New dreams abound with Fastorslow and, while the trainer is happy to be back on the big stage after some quiet years, there is no danger of him getting carried away with the tide of emotion that comes with training a live contender for the Gold Cup.

“You get a bit older and you get a bit of sense, don’t you? There’s no point in getting too excited,” says Brassil, 67, in between sips of tea at the kitchen table of his home just off the Curragh.

“I try not to think about it until I’m there. For me, they are just races with names on them. You have to consider what’s in the races but, you could be reading about them or be involved in them, so it’s nice to be involved. The minute you leg a jockey up on a horse, it’s out of your hands. There’s nothing you can do about it.”

He added, “The other thing is, ye [the media] have to try and sensationalise a story like mine because it’s something different to who ye are normally writing about. There are only so many angles you can cover.

“The bigger trainers will turn up with a different string of novices to Cheltenham every year and some of those will turn into Gold Cup winners or Champion Hurdle winners further down the line. It’s a nice story when one of the smaller fellas comes along but we’re not getting caught up in the excitement of it all.”

Fascinating plot

The bigger trainers, as Brassil alludes to, don’t come much bigger than Willie Mullins. The rivalry between Fastorslow and the champion handler’s Galopin Des Champs has been one of the most fascinating subplots to develop in National Hunt racing in recent times.

The score stands at two apiece after Fastorslow played his part in a pulsating Paddy Power Irish Gold Cup at the Dublin Racing Festival when pushing the reigning Gold Cup winner to within a little over four lengths.

It remains all to play for at Cheltenham, with Brassil keeping his cards close to his chest with regards to how he plans on turning the tables in March.

“We were very happy with how Fastorslow came out of Leopardstown. He gave an exhibition of jumping and, on better ground, we’d hope to see further improvement. The winner would have been very hard to beat on the day, regardless.”

So how do you go about taking the scalp of Galopin Des Champs on the greatest stage of them all?

“Ah, sure we’ve time to give that one a bit of thought,” comes the playful reply. “He’s [Galopin Des Champs] a very good horse, especially when he gets testing ground. They have changed back to tactics which have seen him to best effect, which is riding him close to the pace and using his stamina. He can be very exuberant.”

Feelgood story

It would take a bit of poetic licence to try and compare the rivalry between Galopin Des Champs and Fastorslow as something out of David and Goliath given the latter is owned by a multi-millionaire property developer.

However, the trainer in this story speaks to the very soul of National Hunt racing and Brassil’s resurgence, with the help of Fastorslow’s owners Sean and Bernardine Mulryan, has been one of the feelgood stories in a time where the powerhouse operations have gobbled up much of the opposition.

Brassil said: “Most of those new money owners, they like to be associated with the big names. They don’t mind if the trainer has three or four hundred horses at their disposal. When you go back to the ‘50s and ‘60s, there was no such thing of smothering the rest with numbers.

“But look, fair play to those fellas. You only have one life so you have to make the best of it. I chose to do what I am doing the way I want to do it. I’ll never become a millionaire at it but I get plenty of satisfaction out of it.”

He added: “I’d like to think I represent the middle-of-the-road smaller trainer. There are plenty of trainers in Ireland who, if they had the yard of horses that I have, they would be well capable of doing the job just as well as I am.”

The reality of the situation is that not many would have been capable of delivering Numbersixvalverde at fever pitch to claim back-to-back Nationals. Few, too, would have managed the career of the ground-dependent Nickname, one of the most awesome performers at full cry over a fence, to nine wins in Ireland.

Low numbers

These are the sort of training performances that might make you think the floodgates would open with regards to owners wanting to have a horse with Brassil. Well, you’d be wrong.

During the 2010-’11 season, Brassil sent out just two winners from 64 runners. The number stood at just four the following season followed by three the next, so Brassil knows better than most how to appreciate the good days when they come along.

He said: “I’m enjoying it lately. I’m lucky that my son David and his partner Audrey came back from France. They are great workers and they ride very well as well. Then we have J.J. [Slevin], through his association with the Mulryans, and I have Ricky Doyle and my other son Conor as well. You need good people around the horses. For years, I was doing most of it myself. I was riding out up until two years ago and I’m 68 in August. I am very lucky to have great staff in the yard as well as good riders”

Brassil added: “I might have only had seven or eight horses at some points and you’d take anything to keep going because you’re trying to rear a family. It’s all about getting the horses.

“When Sean and Bernardine started to give me horses, we had some success with the likes of City Island and Longhouse Poet. I get on well with him and Paddy Aspell [Mulryan’s racing manager] and the gate is always open here - they come and visit whenever they like to and it works very well for everybody.”

Tough chaser

Brassil is loath to start labelling Fastorslow the best he has ever had through his hands. But one thing is for sure, the eight-year-old is certainly one of the toughest.

“He had a little bit of tendon trouble after he won his three-year-old chase in France,” Brassil explained. “He has good healing power. I have an ice machine and a theraplate here and that horse will get iced twice a day, sometimes three times. He’ll be on the theraplate as well. There is a lot of time spent on him and all of the horses here would get individual attention.

“He gets an hour on the walker every evening, 20 minutes on the theraplate, back in his box and then iced for 20 minutes. You can do all of those things when you have a select number of horses. It doesn’t always work out. There is great satisfaction when it does, though.”

It’s that constitution that gives Brassil hope. Lesser horses would not come through what Fastorslow has and be the better for it. Not only is he a horse of great class and ability but he also has the toughness. Gold Cup qualities, if you will.

“There’s only one Gold Cup and you never really know until you run in the race if they will get three-and-a-quarter miles or not. Like, you have seen some great horses down through the years who couldn’t win a Gold Cup. Florida Pearl is a good example. Silviniaco Conti is another. Two King Georges but no Gold Cup. You could write up a long list.”

Brassil added: “It delves into their stamina and resolve. The complexion of the Gold Cup can change so much from the back of the last up to the line. Being second favourite, it won’t be a case of dropping Fastorslow out and seeing how well he’ll run. He has to take part in the race. I think he has the resolve. He loves what he does. Loves jumping and loves his racing.”