ON Monday, I will fly to Australia to travel home with the Coolmore shuttle stallions who have been based in the southern hemisphere since August. Having covered their first mares in early September, the stallions now return to Ireland to prepare for our breeding season.
As head stallion man, I am responsible for the well-being of the horses once they relocate to Coolmore. This is very much a team effort with Paul Gleeson, Noel Stapleton (who keeps more than a watchful eye on Galileo and Sadler’s Wells before him) as well as Darren Flynn, Andrey Dedyuk and Riobard Broderick. This highly-experienced team have over 130 years of knowledge between them.

The early years of my life were spent in Mullinahone, where my parents owned a dairy farm. We had a small pony on whom my siblings and I learned how to ride but that was the extent of my involvement with horses. However, all that changed shortly after I started secondary school, when my family moved to Killenaule.