I PROBABLY got into horses through cousins of mine, who always had a couple of ponies. My parents bought me a pony of my own when I was 10 or 11. Basically that would have been it. I never had any riding lessons or did anything like pony club or eventing. I was more or less been self-taught, messing around on the pony on our family farm at home. When I was 16, I got a summer with local trainer Oliver Brady in Monaghan.

Balapour was the best known horse in the yard at that time. He had finished fourth in the Triumph Hurdle a year or two before I arrived. I went to Cheltenham with Balapour on two occasions after that, when he was twice placed in the County Hurdle.