WE CAN chat as we walk up to the sand gallop to watch two of the younger horses do some easy conditioning work but first, my host must transfer one of his charges from the walker to the paddock.

He slips a rope through the head collar and leads the horse around the side of the building down towards the grass. The 11-year-old son of Flemensfirth is like a lamb, as befitting his veteran status, until he spies the open gate.

Suddenly he’s rearing and whinnying like a two-year-old colt, eliciting a bit of name-calling from his minder, who has been around the block a few times himself.

The grey releases one end of the rope and the bay bounds through the open gate, galloping around and at such pace that you cannot see him getting the brakes on in time as he approaches the border. But of course he does, wheeling around deftly, snorting and strutting, before settling down to have a pick of grass, satisfied that everyone knows the King of Suirview Stables is here.

Meet Sydney Paget.

Pat Doyle has moulded First Lieutenant, Shattered Love, Death Duty, Bacardys, Brindisi Breeze, Wishfull Thinking and No More Heroes, to name just a few. He has enjoyed relentless success, coming back each season with fresh stock and belting out the winners. None provide greater pleasure than when Syd does the honours.

Bred by former jump jockey Paddy Kiely, Syd was a six-time winner and reached a rating of 145 under rules in England when trained by Donald McCain for Roddy O’Byrne.

After losing his form, he returned to Ireland and O’Byrne, who has a long-standing relationship with Doyle after the shrewd Tipp man sold Minnehoma for him, offered Syd for point-to-points.

The results have been spectacular, with 15 successes between the flags and a hunter chase to boot since 2016. Since January, he has won eight in a row, which is a remarkable record given that he was actually retired after suffering what seemed a serious injury last year. He may not be an aesthetic masterpiece, with his dipped back, but beauty is as beauty does and he is closing in on being crowned champion point-to-pointer..

“Sydney Paget is a huge part of my life. I’d get more of a thrill out of him than anything else. He’s an amazing horse and he trains himself. (My daughter) Shannie put up something on p2p.ie, where she works, and I’m after getting a lot of stick over it.”

Doyle will be 62 this year but like Syd, he is not ready to be pensioned off yet. Backed by his wife Mary, who rides work and does a lot of the important flat work on the younger horses, son Jack, when he’s on holidays from his successful riding career in America, and daughters Shannie and Susie, he is currently lying in third in the point-to-point handlers’ table. His tally of 21 winners places him in the slipstream of the trailblazing Donnchadh Doyle and Colin Bowe, who are on 26 and 23 respectively.

TOMMY WADE

In the aforementioned p2p.ie article, Shannie quoted her father as saying that Syd “is my favourite family member. I love them all but he won’t talk back to me so he is number one.” He is smiling broadly as he recounts it. And that’s nice because this morning, he is distraught, having gotten the news earlier that his good friend, the show jumping legend, Tommy Wade had passed away. They went back years, all the way to him sitting on the fantastic Dundrum.

“I was put up on Dundrum when I was four” recounts Doyle. “I can still see me father lifting me up, and Tommy holding Dundrum by the head. I rode Rockbarton as a young horse for Tommy at a show in Cashel. I rode my first winner for Tommy Wade in a point-to-point, it could have been in Bartlemy. A horse called Shaky Times. He was a great pal of mine.

“I used to go visit him every month or six weeks for the last couple of years. I brought him to a point-to-point this year in Ballinaboola. It was the last day I met him. I was absolutely heartbroken to get the news this morning.”

A few classic stories tumble out about some of the strokes pulled in the old days. They will be recounted again over pints, eliciting as much laughter as they did from this visitor. “I could tell some great stories. I’ll miss him.”

Their relationship went full circle when Doyle trained horses for Wade. Brindisi Breeze was the best of them.

“He won his maiden in Loughrea in October. And then he went to Lucinda Russell and in the same season he won his bumper, his maiden hurdle, his Grade 3 and the Albert Bartlett, earlier he had won his maiden point-to-point. But he was a five-year-old but still, it was some feat.”

Doyle’s graduates have been producing the goods for a long time. And key to the continuing popularity of his stock is that as well as knowing their jobs, they train on. They haven’t been squeezed to the pip to win their maidens. Suirview Stables is a Grade 1-winning factory.

“Nowadays horses are pretty well done from the time they’re foals. It’s not like it was 15, 20 years ago. Three-year-olds weren’t touched until six weeks before sales. It’s totally different now. Most of the three-year-old stores have been to a sale as stores and they’re very professional men, the men that buy them.

“We’ve a few fellas around here and they would bring their yearlings in for the winter and probably put breaking tack on them and drive them on long reins, and probably do that for the months of December, January and February, and probably do it again their two-year-old days. They’re so well handled, horses are a lot more forward than they were.”

What makes Doyle a marvel is that he remains in the top tier, despite the evolution of the point-to-point scene. Sydney Paget is fun but the operation is maintained by what happens with the four-year-olds. He has 30, 14 of which have run. Nine of those have won.

“’Tis a big business. ‘Tis easier win a maiden hurdle now or a bumper than it is to win a point-to-point maiden. It’s very professional and you get some good lads at it. You take Donnchadh Doyle there, a wonderful young fella. Those lads in Wexford are a great bunch of lads. Sam Curling is another fella doing a great job.

“Back 10 years ago, the likes of us were going up to the sales and we wouldn’t give 20 grand in a lifetime for a horse. But ‘tis gone to a different level now.”

Is that sustainable, with ever-spiralling prices meaning that for all the success, one bad year could wipe you out?

“Is it sustainable?”, he repeats, wondering out loud. “Well it is a numbers game and for the seven or eight good ones that you’ll produce this year and get a good price for ‘em, they’re going to cover it. Then you’d be hoping to get the rest of it sold and pull the whole thing together. I don’t know is the answer. The only thing, is there are a lot of good horses coming out of ‘em. Apart from the winners, the seconds, thirds and fourths are turning out to be good horses. That’ll tell you the type of racing it is.

“I brought it to a level 10 years ago or thereabouts, we won 10 or maybe 14 four-year-old maidens, banging them in every Sunday. But then these boys came along and they brought it to another level. They’re great plucky lads. They go up there and buy the nice horses and come back and train them. And in all fairness, they’re turning out to be good horses.”

RECURRING

It is a recurring theme in racing generally to remark negatively on the standard bearers, as if their hard work, their ability, their identification of a niche, their bit of luck and their remarkable success should be curtailed.

Doyle is having none of that. He is friendly with Willie Mullins, who he rode against and who regularly buys horses from him, while he is tutor to a number of Gigginstown House Stud babies every year so perhaps we might expect him to defend them.

But he was confronted by a similar phenomenon on the point circuit and upped his game as required to remain a force. Staying still is going backwards and complaining doesn’t to do any good.

“I think Willie Mullins proved a very great thing in Punchestown. I think of his 18 winners, he had 13 different owners... I don’t know if racing at as low an ebb in Ireland as people are saying it is. It has been hugely competitive.

“Barry Connell is a great man for the game too, he had 18 winners there (last season) and has a lot of young horses. Noel (Meade) has had a great season, Joseph (O’Brien), Henry (de Bromhead), Jessica Harrington - they talk about that the two big fellas have it taken over, Willie and Gordon (Elliott), there’s five or six. How many can there be at the top? It’s always been dominated by one or two and it’s the same in the flat... We’re a small country.”

The sport and the industry needs the big investor but ultimately, the cream rises to the top and to be the best requires a total package.

“I’m a good trainer. I have no doubt in the world that I’m very good to train a horse but I’m a very bad man to deal with people. Willie Mullins is one of the greatest men of all times to deal with people. And he’s so knowledgeable. He can sit down and talk to a rugby crowd, golf crowd. I sat with him the other day and he was explaining so much to be about the trotters in France, the headgear they were wearing, the shoes they were wearing. He’s that intelligent a man... Willie Mullins can talk about every subject. If he wanted to talk about opera I’m sure he could because he’s a very intelligent man.

“I’m a worker. Willie Mullins wouldn’t know how to push a wheelbarrow! This morning, I mucked out 15 horses. And there’s no point patting me on the back. That’s what I’m capable of doing.”

The contentment with his lot is obvious. He is proud of what he has built with Mary on this picturesque 56-acre site. Standing at the top of the sand ring, we are looking down on the house he grew up in. His father had a riding school but Pat never had any interest in that. He was intrigued by racing but there was no living to be made from it, so he had to look elsewhere. He left school at 13 and started out with Mickey Browne, father of breeze-up maestro Willie. He listened and learned and branched out himself, to good effect.

“Hated the job but it made me a lot of money. Built Suirview and we have a nice, comfortable place here. But then I got back into doing what I loved. I love racing.”

Everything he needs is here, including a schooling strip of smaller fences and larger regulation ones. He can set up a two-mile trek with schooling fences if required. It is perfect. Little wonder Michael and Eddie O’Leary send him their best prospects. He bought Michael’s first horse, Tuco, but knows Eddie for more than 30 years.

“I was training a good few horses for them along the way for the track, doing the breeze-up and that. Michael was getting more into it. Then Eddie asked me one day if I’d concentrate on doing the young horses and bringing them on in the point-to-points and send them on, so I did. It’s worked out and been very good.”

Davy Russell used to be a regular here when he lived in Cashel, longing to sit on the next champions and help bring them along. A hands-on man like Doyle, his arrival meant Mary could get a sleep-in. Mary called Russell Pat’s second son.

LOYAL SUPPORTERS

Of course Gigginstown are not his only clients. Walter Connors, John and Hilary Parrott and Michael O’Driscoll have been loyal supporters. And he backs his own judgement. He owns 12 of the four-year-olds in the stables. Of the four that have run, three have triumphed.

The man who broke Monksfield enjoys educating the stars of tomorrow.

“I get a huge kick out of it. The best kick I can get is buying a three-year-old, breaking him, going to a point-to-point, winning... (if it’s) my own (then) the final thing is getting them sold. And then for them to train on and be good horses. It’s a huge thrill.

“We don’t like to do things too quick. It actually takes me probably between four and five months to get a horse to where I want to get him. You will get the odd horse that will get there in four months. We break them, let them out for a month and bring them back in the middle of August. We do an awful lot of conditioning work before we’d do anything else. You’re talking five good months.”

He is positive about the industry, but with one caveat. “It’s very healthy but it’s getting too over-populated again. The breeders are losing the run of themselves again. It’s a cycle, it happens every 10 or 15 years. The bottom end of the market will suffer ‘cos there’ll be too many horses.

“We’re lucky enough, we’ve great clients to send us nice horses and thankfully we’re able to buy a few nice horses at the sales as well... And I’m sure we’ll buy a few bad ones as well!”

You need a bit of fortune, no doubt, but it’s never the basis for long-term success.

Clearly, Doyle is a magnificent judge and trainer. He will be active at the store sales once more, looking to pick up another 12 or so, at an aggregate cost of close to half a million. It’s a high stakes game but he is happy.

“I couldn’t do it without the staff. I have good workers and good riders and that’s vital. They say I’m contrary but herself is with me for 42 years and the blacksmith is with me 32 years!

“If the missus stays with me as long as I’m around the place, the kids come visit me every now and then and I stay healthy and happy, that’ll do me.”