"It’s a nice game once you play it nice and handy.” Jimmy Mangan’s appraisal of our sport hasn’t changed since the last time he did this very piece just over seven years ago. Still breeding, buying, selling, handling, training, owning. Still laughing, telling stories, meeting new people. Still wearing that iconic hat. Still enjoying it.

Winning Grand Nationals and Grade 1s from a yard miniscule in size compared to the big players probably helped the enjoyment along the way, but it’s the simple cumulative day-to-day process that comes with a life devoted to National Hunt racing that has Mangan so content.

You suspect that the attitude is key.

“I’d say so,” he agrees. “I hate to see people saying ‘Oh I won a ton of money today, I backed such and such horse.’ I was alongside a bookie one day and this fella came up and he collected a lot of money off him and the bookie said to him while he walked away, ‘You mind that money now, I want it back!’

“If you’re fool enough, you will give it back. Play it handy and you’ll enjoy it. This is a magnificent game. The calibre of horses in this country, and in England, you couldn’t but enjoy the game.

“There’s such talent among riders and horses and it’s the same on the flat. When you see the news today and you see other countries torn with famine and war and floods and earthquakes, we don’t know how well off we are really.”

Of course, there is an extra pep to his step in recent months. Actually, there is a fair case to be made for that pep coming alongside the arrival of Spillane’s Tower to his yard in Conna, two years back now.

“I trained a horse for J.P. a good few years ago,” he recalls. “He won at Limerick over Christmas but unfortunately he met with a fatal accident after that. Listen, I was just speaking to Frank Berry one day at the races and I said, ‘Frank, have you any nice horses for me?’ and he said, ‘Leave it with me.’

“Frank and J.P. sent me this horse and the day he arrived from Martinstown, I said what a specimen of a horse and thankfully there is an engine in there to drive a beautiful frame.”

Spillane’s Tower has been handled nice and handy so far by Mangan. No rush, no panic. One win from five starts over hurdles and well held on his first two starts over fences never deterred his trainer. And when he came good with a classy display to overhaul Blood Destiny at Punchestown, he was quick to quash any Cheltenham talk.

Fairyhouse was always the aim and, sure enough, the plan came together.

“It was incredible really,” he says. “It brought me back to Conna Castle. When he won the race, it was a thrilling finish against Big Zeb. This was equally as good, if not better. It brought back memories of the good old days.

“I’m just after coming from a funeral there now and the priest read from the altar, that the lady who passed away, Noreen Hamilton, one of her last great thrills was cheering home Spillane’s Tower at Fairyhouse. I remember meeting her at Gowran on Thyestes day and sadly she was diagnosed with cancer in the meantime.

“It’s amazing how racing can touch people. No doubt about it. We had a great lady here Gerty Murphy, a Clonmel lady, daughter of the late Willie Treacy, who was a great trainer. She was head of our point-to-point here in Tallow. She was an incredible woman for racing.

“I met her at Gowran that day as well. Unfortunately she was buried there last week as well. Jeez it’s terrible. Two great people, stone mad for racing. They knew and loved the game.”

Took control

Life is short, not least when you live it to the full. It’s 52 years since Mangan first rode in his first point-to-point, 42 years since he took control of his father Paddy’s licence, 21 years since Monty’s Pass won the National and 16 years since Conna Castle. Not to mention all the other good ones associated with Mangan along the way, horses like Stroll Home, Whinstone Boy and Letter Of Credit.

He bought and sold Bindaree and also foaled Amberleigh House, so from 2002 to 2004, the National winner spent some time with him. Of course, the middle leg – Monty’s Pass – is the one he will always be remembered for. The horse with an apparent bad heart who won the biggest jumps race of them all.

“The lads that bought him first were all from Kildorrery,” he recalls. “They bought him anyway but with all the excitement they missed the vet reading out that he had a heart murmur or something along those lines. When they found out they wanted to throw him back but they couldn’t.

“Marie Harding broke him and he came to me to be trained. After a while I rang up the lads and said this horse isn’t too bad. We went down to Dungarvan for a point-to-point and jeez I fancied him mad and he ended up running like a hairy goat. The lad I had up on him was a nice, quiet rider and Monty’s Pass needed plenty of riding. I said before, if he was a human, he’d draw the dole.

“I had a good lad in the yard, Davy Nugent and I said, ‘Have you a licence?’ and he said no, and I said, ‘Get one, you’re riding this fella next time.’ Davy was hardy out, played corner back for Ballysaggart here and you’d get it hard to score a point off him. I often said he was the making of Monty’s Pass.

“He won in Tallow and Henrietta Knight came up to see him. I said to her, ‘Listen, you can vet this horse for anything, but he won’t pass on his heart’ and she said, ‘Oh God put him back in so!’ She very kindly sent me on the pictures she took that day after he won the National.

“The lads eventually ended up selling him to a man from Belfast, Mike Futter. I asked Mike who’d be training him and he said to me, ‘Don’t you train horses?’ Sure every horse out of here would usually be sold on so it was great he stuck around.

“He progressed away anyway, got beaten a short-head in the Galway Plate, and then finished second in the Kerry National at Listowel – Kieran Kelly, Lord have mercy on him, rode him that day.

“The following season he was second to a Willie Mullins horse in the Topham and I was talking to Jim McGrath from the BBC and I said, ‘Jim, next year we’re coming back to win the big one.’

“When we got back to Liverpool, I fancied him big time. I walked the course with Barry Geraghty and I had one piece of advice for him. I’d met Paddy Kiely at a funeral in the lead up to the race and asked him if he had any advice, and he said tell your jockey not to be asking for big ones, the fences are big enough. He said Pat Taaffe told him that so that was good enough for me.

“Halfway through the race anyway, I could see Barry saw a stride and he went winding up Monty’s Pass. The horse put down and hit the fence. He got through it but I was there saying, ‘Is this fella after suffering from a bout of memory loss or what?’ But sure they won handy anyway. Barry was a super jockey, always had him in the right place. I said to him coming back in, did he suffer from memory loss, and he said ‘Ah Jimmy, I only did it once,’ and I said ‘Well once was nearly too much!’”

Changing times

Some horse, some day. Times have changed again since. Indeed, three years later, when Conna Castle gave Mangan his first Grade 1, Willie Mullins won the trainers’ championship for the second time, and he hasn’t lost one since. Suffice to say, the Grade 1s are harder won now.

In the same period, the scale of trade out of the point-to-point sector has evolved into a booming business, a widening tributary into the mainstream of National Hunt racing. Having been born and bred through point-to-points you’d understand if Mangan hankered back to the good old days, when the community and sporting nature of point-to-points was at its pomp, but he has no such feeling, content to cut his cloth to suit his measure.

“Sure aren’t these point-to-point lads incredible?” he says. “The guys from Wexford and the likes of Sam Curling. The money they invest into the game and all the overheads they have. I’d say they’re under real pressure with the way the weather is this year. Hopefully they will get their horses sold and no doubt they will be back to the big store sales to go again.

“There is no doubt the game has changed. I know farmers who always had a point-to-pointer. Their sons grew up but the horses went and it wasn’t on account of anything – they’d rather have a few cows than a horse to go point-to-pointing.

“But they might get enough of that, and come back again. The wheel keeps turning. I wouldn’t blame the big fellas, people saying they’ve ruined it for the small fellas – they haven’t, there is plenty of room for the small fellas now if they want to have a go.”

Mangan’s operation has stayed largely the same. He has more broodmares than racehorses but he’s happy with that, to be able to sample each sector and the different challenges. “I wouldn’t be able to make racing pay without breeding and selling a few, I wouldn’t have a hope,” he says. “The stallions have gone expensive and if you haven’t a horse by one of the big names up at the sales, nobody will look at you.

“It’s all fashion, no fault of anyone’s because the dearer the stallion the busier the stallion. Funny isn’t it? If a stallion man came to you and said you can have him for 500 or a 1,000, you’d say, ‘Ah Jesus, he’s no good.’ That’s the way it goes.

“At the end of the day, the dam is everything, if you have a good mare, she will breed to any kind of a stallion. We’ve 14 or 15 broodmares. Some go lucky and some go unlucky and that’s the way it goes. There’s nothing easy. If it was easy we’d all be at it. It’s like racing, when you have the good days, enjoy the bloody good days, because around the corner are the bad ones.

“Training wise, I’ve about a dozen, most of them pointers. Maybe we can get a few quality horses after the win but I wouldn’t want a big number. Labour today is a nightmare and there is no use saying otherwise.

“A select few horses would be ideal, I’d be able to give them more time. I’d be able to go out there at night to the stables and make sure that everything is okay, checking them, I love that. If I had too many horses I wouldn’t be able to do that.

“That’s exactly the way it was for my father and that’s the way it will stay because I’ll be 69 now in August and I’m coming up the home straight in the training department.

“I’ve great staff and I’m very lucky to have them. If they said good luck to me in the morning, I’d probably have to fold up and that would be that. Hopefully they are all happy and they’re doing good jobs too.”

You could do a lot worse than give a horse to Jimmy Mangan, the wealth of experience he has accumulated and the craic you’d have along the way.

The recent rainy weather might allow us to see Spillane’s Tower at Punchestown, but if the ground does dry out, he’ll be off to Martinstown for his holidays. With a bit of luck he’ll be a real prospect for the big three-mile Grade 1s next season.

That would be a great story line to look forward to. Racing needs its characters and Mangan would be the first to attest to that. It’s the one thing he points to when asked what is the most enjoyable part of his job.

“You meet some terribly nice people and some buggers as well. I’ll tell you a story. I went up to Fairyhouse one day to ride a horse. This trainer rang me and said, ‘I’m putting you up on this horse and all you have to do is steer him,’ and I said, ‘Jeez, that’s great.’

“We went up and walked the course, up the Ballyhack and back down again. He said, ‘You see that marker there, push the button there and it’ll be all over. So off I went, passed Ballyhack and by the time I got to the marker, the button that needed to be pressed, got pressed. I’d say the horse beat one or two home, he ran terrible altogether.

“I came back in and I was talking to the owners first and I said, ‘Jeez, there was no horse there, I don’t know what this man is talking about.’ And next thing, the trainer comes barging through, ‘What happened to you, what happened to you?’

“I was thinking, is this man blind or what. So I said, ‘Do you know what happened now…didn’t I press the wrong feckin button!’ Sure the owners went up laughing – they said, ‘By God you gave him the right answer!

“Look, I’ve had some great days, met great people, enjoyed it all the time and continue to enjoy it. If I had to do it all again, I’d do exactly the same.”