SASVANA winning at Leopardstown last Thursday week was special, as it had been a long time since our last winner.

It was only later that evening when my partner reminded me, that I realised just how long; 14 years. However, as someone who lives and breathes horses and has been involved in racing for close on half a century, the years in between those winners just flew by. However, it would be nice if we didn’t have to wait quite as long for the next one!

I didn’t come from a racing background; in fact, my parents tried to steer me away from horses. My father had worked at a stud owned by the American Ambassador to Ireland, Raymond Guest, and my grandfather had been in the Canadian Mounted Police [Mountie].

We always had a work horse/hunter at home when I was young but no direct involvement with racing or thoroughbreds. However, I long held a fascination with the sport of kings and couldn’t wait until I was in a position to buy my own racehorse. Eventually, having completed my education and started work as a gardener, I bought my first horse in partnership with another owner.

From there, I was involved in a couple of small syndicates before taking out my own permit some 40 years ago.

Initially, I trained National Hunt horses and point-to-pointers but enjoyed little success. However, after I met Eileen Farrelly, she changed my way of thinking and veered me towards flat racing.

The first filly we got involved in, Winsome Girl, won for us in Tralee in 1991 under Niall Byrne. She turned out to be the cornerstone of our future success, breeding three winners including the blacktype filly Twiggy’s Sister.

The latter won three times for us, while her half-sister, Girl Wonder, won on four occasions. The third filly from the family, Winsome Magic, failed to win for us but did subsequently for Eddie Lynam. All three fillies were bred here at Misty Lodge Stud, which also produced Twiggy’s Sister’s Cornwallis winner, Royal Razalma. That latter colt was also significant as he was Lope De Vega’s first group winner as a stallion.

Having enjoyed an Indian summer in 2003, with seven wins from the two sisters, we had to wait another four years before Nanny McPhee scored for us at Fairyhouse in September 2007.

Unfortunately, having won her maiden at the second time of asking, Nanny McPhee lost her life on her very next run. We had bought her dam Ostwahl from Germany and she produced seven foals one after another. While Nanny McPhee was the best of them on the track, another filly, Ms Sasha Malia, did incredibly well as a broodmare.

Named after Barack Obama’s two daughters, she bred six winners from seven runners, including Bungle Inthejungle’s first blacktype winner in Italy. She still stands here at Misty Lodge Stud and is in foal to Showcasing this year. Over the years we have had as many as seven or eight broodmares, with the same number of horses in training. However, I always worked full-time as a self-employed landscape gardener so the racing/breeding was more of a hobby.

Now that Eileen and myself have both retired, we are content to keep just the three broodmares and two in training. We have an unraced three-year-old who is owned by my brother and sister, so as ever, it is kept within the family. Throughout the years I have mostly trained for ourselves as I never had the time to expand any further. Kevin Byrne, the owner of Sasvana, works for Ken Condon but has been riding out for me for many years. He comes in on his break and is fantastic to have around the yard.

After finishing fourth at Dundalk in December, Kevin decided to take the filly home and give her time to develop as she was a big, weak individual. To be fair to him, that patience paid off and it was wonderful to see her win at Leopardstown last time. Hopefully she can go on and win again as she is lightly raced and only coming to herself now.

With a bit of luck, we might get another win from her this season and not have to wait so long for our next success. Our breeding policy has always been to take the stock to the sales and sell whatever we can. If they are considered good enough, they will sell, if not we take them home and race them.

For that reason, it has nearly always been fillies that we have run on the track over the years.

Dermot Murphy was in conversation with John O’Riordan