How did the syndicate get started?

I’m in racing, I suppose, four or five years now. David (O’Sullivan, trainer) owns a restaurant in Killarney, and I’d been great friends with him for years. He asked me one day if I had any interest in getting a horse and, after humming and hawing for a while, and looking for a horse for ages, Itsalonglongroad came up for sale, and we had great luck from there.

We used to travel the country with him and he’s won about six races for David and I. A few of our friends expressed interest in starting a syndicate if David was to buy another horse, so we bought Prince Of Air in a claimer in Clonmel from Philip Rothwell, and it started from there.

My two brothers and a few of our friends are in the syndicate, from all different kinds of trades. We have electricians, block-layers, builders, hoteliers, there’s people working in law, accountants, every kind of person you could think of. A new person came into the syndicate recently, and they’d never had a winner, so it was unbelievable for him.

One of the lads in the syndicate, Prince Of Air was his first horse, and then my two brothers came along for Woodstream Lad who was also their first horse. To own two winning horses in a row is amazing, some people wouldn’t see that in a lifetime. The problem now is that they think it’s an easy game, they don’t know how lucky they are! Some people could be waiting 10 years between winners.

We bought Woodstream Lad from Philip Rothwell only a few months ago, but he’s shown some ability at home. When we bought him, Philip had told us that his confidence was a bit knocked after falling in a couple of chases.

There was a good crowd of supporters in Killarney, what was the day like last Sunday?

I was on holidays watching the race on TV, and I was on the phone to the syndicate. We had entered him into a hurdle race at Killarney on the same day, thinking he’d go well, but he didn’t get in so we were left with the chase.

It was a shock, we weren’t expecting to win the race with horses from Henry de Bromhead’s and Gordon Elliott’s yard in there. He ran an absolutely unbelievable race and we were stunned. One of the lads just threw his child into the air over to his mother and ran off to celebrate, and the two brothers were running into the parade ring. It’s rare that we have a winner, so when we do, the boys go half mad.

David was nearly as shocked as we were about the win. It’s great when small trainers win races like that. When we were balloted out of the hurdle race, we went into the chase thinking we could pick up a bit of prize money and get his confidence back up and running over fences, and we’d see what we’d have after. It did all of our confidence the world of good.

The HRI account had been running low for a while there, and it’s back up again now so we’re all happy! David reckons those yellow colours that I picked are lucky colours. Prince Of Air was the first horse to carry them and he won three times and placed six. Woodstream Lad is the next horse, and he’s been great as well.

It’s a killer when the lads are all at the races and the one day I go on holidays I miss it, but that’s life. I watched it live in The Tipsy Jockey pub in Benidorm. We had a winner in Killarney last May while I was also away on holidays, so I think the boys will want me to go on more holidays when our horses are running in Killarney! Every time they run a horse in Killarney when I’m not there it wins.

It must have been great to see David winning, having been friends with him so long.

David only has five or six horses, and we have two in the syndicate. These small trainers like David do wonderful work with their horses. Even Philip Rothwell, who we’ve bought a few horses from, has been very good to us, as have his staff. They’ve become good friends of ours.

David trains on the beach. It’s a different type of training to other yards, and that kind of work sweetens the horse up and turns them around in a different way. The horses really enjoy it, and during the summer he’s on the beach nearly every day of the week with them.

It’s only himself and Claudia that do all of the work with the horses, and then a girl called Ellie goes in to ride out on weekends. It’s only a small team but they work very hard. The best part of being involved in horses is seeing them get rewarded for that time and effort.

Do you know when or where Woodstream Lad will next run?

I don’t know, and I’ll leave that up to David, but I would say we’ll pick out another race in a month or six weeks if we can find good-ish to yielding ground. We’ll give him a little break for a few weeks and David can work his magic with him on the beach. The handicapper was good enough and only gave us 7lb, so at least we have a horse that we can go and have some more days out with.