It was a beautifully sunny Wednesday morning in October when Barry Connell welcomed the press, sponsors and other industry personnel to his Boherbaun Stables for the launch of Fairyhouse’s Winter Festival.

It was an interesting choice by Fairyhouse. Not Gordon Elliott, not Willie Mullins, not Henry de Bromhead. You associate the big meetings with those big trainers. But Barry Connell has always been a fascinating character and the noises he had been making about his Royal Bond Novice Hurdle contender Marine Nationale were garnering headlines.

Hugely successful in the finance industry, the south Dublin native has chosen to spend his disposable income and time on racing, his greatest passion, firstly as an owner, then as a jockey-owner and now as a trainer-owner, having taken out his licence in 2020 and developed this beautiful site in Nurney, Co Kildare into a boutique training base.

The parcel of land, around 15km from the Curragh has 40 acres for 40 horses, a state-of-the-art turn-out stables for horses who can choose themselves whether they’d like to be inside or out, and an immaculate Wexford sand gallop.

“I’ve never had a horse like him (Marine Nationale) in all my career in racing, I just think he’s different,” Connell asserts to a small huddle of journalists in the pristinely kept courtyard.

It’s a big statement. Connell must appreciate some of the good horses he had before. The Tullow Tank, Shinrock Paddy, Mount Benbulben and Our Conor. All Grade 1 winners.

“Yeah I do,” he replies. “I know he’s only won two bumpers and a maiden hurdle but it’s the manner that he goes through his races. He is just very exciting. I think he’s a Grade 1 horse and that’s why we’ve put him in a Grade 1 race.

“That’s the impression he has given us and what he’s shown us in his races to date. I might be wrong, he might hit a ceiling but at the moment, we’re all dreamers in this game and it’s fantastic to have this guy.”

You have to appreciate the honesty. In racing, the fickle game that it is, you’d wonder why trainers talk up their horses at all. Horses can make a fool of you fairly quickly and Connell has been in the game long enough to attest to that, but he is still willing to say what he sees, and he sees the possibility of a real star in Marine Nationale.

He saw the same in Our Conor, whom he bought after his exceptional juvenile hurdle season. You might recall that in an extremely generous gesture, he pledged all the prize money the Dessie Hughes-trained horse won that following season would go to support the jockeys emergency fund following the injuries suffered by John Thomas McNamara and Jonjo Bright.

Our Conor didn’t win in the lead up to Cheltenham but he ran some fine races in behind Hurricane Fly at Leopardstown and he was rightly fancied by many to put up a big bid for the Champion Hurdle back at the scene of his devastatingly brilliant win in the Triumph Hurdle 12 months previous.

However, jumping the third flight, the first as they went out on the back straight, Our Conor was too brave and took a horrible fall which turned out to be a fatal one. It has to be one of the cruellest stories racing has ever generated.

So Connell knows all about it. It rarely goes to script in this game.

When this season’s Royal Bond Novice Hurdle came around, the script Connell had hoped for wasn’t developing and truth be told, he had resigned himself that this day wasn’t going to be the day.

Reflecting now, he recalls: “When the rain came and the ground got softer, I just felt it wasn’t going to be ideal for him because I said all along he’d prefer a sounder surface.

“During the race he got shuffled back early on and lost his position but with the natural speed he has he was able to find a gap on the rail after he got trapped in.

“I couldn’t have been happier with him going down to the last but he missed a beat there and you’re thinking with the short run-in at Fairyhouse, it is hard to regain your momentum.

“But he managed to do it and got up on the line and won his Grade 1 and I think that says a lot about him”

In doing so he gave Connell a first Grade 1 winner as a trainer in just his third full year training. He only had to wait two months until his second, Good Land in the Nathaniel Lacy & Partners Solicitors Novice Hurdle at the Dublin Racing Festival at his home track Leopardstown.

“I thought he was the best horse going into the race and he’d win barring an accident or anything untoward,” Connell said, again displaying admirable honesty and soaring confidence in a horse who had just a maiden hurdle and bumper win to his name.

“He is a brilliant jumper and he has a great mind, a bombproof temperament. We loved how he did it at Christmas (won two-and-a-half-mile maiden hurdle). He is lightly-raced so we really felt there was improvement coming and he showed it there in a Grade 1 that he’s a really good horse. I think he’ll win the Ballymore.”

Connell told Nick Luck the same thing on the Luck On Sunday at Leopardstown the next day, while also instructing the studio crowd and viewers at home to do the antepost double with Marine Nationale in the Supreme and Good Land in the Ballymore, and that was before Facile Vega bombed out on the Leopardstown card later that day.

Marine Nationale is now joint favourite with most bookmakers for the festival opener and Good Land is vying to top the market for the Ballymore. It’s serious going for a trainer in just his third full season.

You can point to the resources he has but it is a fabulous achievement from someone who has basically learned as he went in racing, ever since he started riding as an amateur jockey in his 40s, going on to ride 34 winners on the track.

A hugely successful stockbroker and fund manager in Dublin, Connell has used his wealth to give him the opportunity of gaining the full racing experience, but you wouldn’t be long spending a serious amount of money without any success in racing so it’s testament to him that he has reached the pinnacle in such a short space of time.

“I got a great buzz out of riding and when I retired from that, I thought about getting something set up,” Connell explained. “I kind of always had it in the back of my mind that training might be something nice to do down the road. So when I was going around to all these yards, I was keeping an eye out as to what were the best bits. So when we came to put this project together, we had a good few ideas as to what way I wanted the place set up.

“It’s a boutique operation. We try and source horses from store sales and give them at least two years to develop and mature before we even think about running them. That is something we can do because I’m not a commercial trainer, I don’t have to answer to anybody and in any case, now that we’re set up, you have horses coming through every year.

“It was about getting the right place and putting the staff and the facilities together. Like without the staff here this operation just wouldn’t work. The people we have here are gems, they really are. They’re all local and that’s a big help.

“I’ve an office here and an office at home. I’m still involved in the financial end of things, on my own account, I don’t work for anybody else. I kind of nip in the office here in between lots and keep an eye on things. I live in Carrickmines which is just at the back of Leopardstown. It’s 45 minutes down to here.

“Myself and Rory (son) come down here everyday. We finish up in the mornings here around 12:30 and then we go home. I’d come back down in the afternoons when we have vets in or other things that need to be done.”

A big part of Connell’s success has been his link up with jockey Michael O’Sullivan. The Cork rider rang the trainer to see if he could ride Marine Nationale in his bumper at Punchestown last May and has impressed him since.

“Mikey has been an absolute find,” Connell asserts. “He was really cool on Marine that day at Punchestown. I asked him to come and start riding out after that, so he did for a few days a week and soon after that, I sat down with him and asked to consider turning professional. I told him the job was there for him and that when he lost his claim, I’d support him.

“I think he will be up there with Paul Townend and Jack Kennedy in a couple of years. Look at his ride in the Royal Bond, everything that could ave went wrong went wrong, but he was cool, he sat and waited and still got the horse up to win.”

Marine Nationale hasn’t been seen on the track since Fairyhouse but despite that his price has continued to contract for the Supreme Novice Hurdle, his Festival target. A big reason for that was the form of Royal Bond working particularly well with Irish Point (runner-up to him at Fairyhouse) and Champ Kiely (fourth) fighting out the finish of the Grade 1 Lawlor’s Of Naas Novice Hurdle in January.

“We gave him the guts of a month off and he went off site just to get a complete break,” Connell reveals. “The reason I haven’t run him since Fairyhouse and decided to go straight to Cheltenham is that we had a summer campaign with him because he had missed his previous winter campaign with a sore wither last year.

“So we campaigned him sparingly during the summer, in the bumpers at Punchestown and Killarney. He seems to have come back in good form. He is a light-framed horse so he’s not going to take a whole lot of getting fit.

“I think he has enough experience over hurdles - his jumping is very good. The only semblance he made of a mistake was at the last at Fairyhouse and I think he learned plenty from that.

“And a big thing with him is that he has a bomb-proof temperament. You can be 100% sure that he’s not going to boil over and lose his race in the parade ring over there. That’s massive going to Cheltenham, massive.

“It’s the same with Good Land. I know when I go to put the saddle on the pair of them, they’ll walk around the parade ring and go down to the start without any fuss.”

The pressure and anticipation is sure to intensify in the coming weeks but Connell has never come across as a guy to be knocked off kilter, always exuding a calm authority.

“You’ll laugh at this but the biggest pressure I’ve felt was going to Killarney for Marine Nationale’s second run because of what he did at Punchestown on his debut,” Connell says. “He was exceptional at Punchestown but in the back of your head, you’re always thinking could this be a flash in the pan, a one-off.

“The pressure really is to get the horse there in peak condition and then the trainer’s job is done.”

So far, the man from south Dublin is doing that job exceptionally.

This article is taken from The Irish Field Cheltenham Magazine 2023. CLICK HERE TO ORDER YOUR COPY