Racing

It’s not such a long way to Cheltenham for Tipperary man Fergal O’Brien

Gloucestershire-based trainer has two day-three festival hopes in Crambo and Dysart Enos

Jonathan Burke riding Crambo (red) on his way to winning The Howden Long Walk Hurdle from Tom Bellamy and Paisley Park at Ascot last December. Photograph: Alan Crowhurst/Getty Images
Jonathan Burke riding Crambo (red) on his way to winning The Howden Long Walk Hurdle from Tom Bellamy and Paisley Park at Ascot last December. Photograph: Alan Crowhurst/Getty Images
Brian O'Connor
Wed Mar 13 2024 - 19:00

Fergal O’Brien is from Tipperary. He wants to make that clear. From Ballina, on the eastern side of Lough Derg. Killaloe is just across the bridge in Clare. Galway also touches Lough Derg; but he’s Tipp. Even now, after 35 years in England. And then there’s Limerick.

He knows Limerick city well too, or used to. His dad used to commute from Ballina daily to drive for Bus Éireann. It meant his son could play football for Hyde Rangers near the bus station. That’s when he wasn’t playing hurling at home.

O’Brien doesn’t know how one of his older brothers, David, got the racing bug but it spread. Even before he was a teenager, O’Brien loved mucking in with the horses at yards such as the late Andrew McNamara’s in Croom. He was in England before his Inter Cert, returned to do it, and quickly went back.

How the Irish man has worked his way through the racing ranks to become one of the top-five jumps trainers in Britain is a rare success story, one he hopes will get the vital cherry on top of a first Cheltenham Festival winner on Thursday — or maybe two.

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Crambo is a leading player in the featured Paddy Power Stayers’ Hurdle. Dysart Enos is the main home hope in a vintage Mares’ Novice Hurdle. For the 51-year-old former stable lad, head lad, assistant-trainer, and trainer since 2011, festival success at what is now his local track would be a crowning achievement — whenever it comes.

“I don’t wake up in a cold sweat about it. We have the ingredients at Ravenswell Farm; owners, great staff, some lovely horses, fantastic facilities, so I feel it’s only a matter of time. It will come. Mind you, I’ve been saying that for eight or nine years now!

“It will happen when it happens, and I honestly don’t worry about it. We’re trying our best. We’ve had four or five seconds. If it doesn’t happen this year, hopefully, it will happen next year. I really want that festival winner. But I want more than one. It’s about winners,” he says.

It took him just a decade to reach a century of those for the first time in 2021. The next season saw 128. Last season yielded 141. There has been quality too. Poetic Rhythm was a first Grade One winner in 2017. But the next one didn’t come until Crambo lifted the Long Walk at Ascot in December. He’s eager to make sure there’s no similar gap between top-flight drinks again.

The problem is that the raiding parties from home are tough to beat. O’Brien’s rise has coincided with unprecedented domination by Irish trainers. It’s very different from when he worked for Capt Tim Foster and Nigel Twiston-Davies during the glory days of Imperial Commander’s Gold Cup (2010.)

But while home is home, England’s been good to him, right from when he enrolled at the racing school in Newmarket 35 years ago.

“It’s better to be born lucky than rich, and I definitely wasn’t born rich. But I was born lucky. I could have ended up anywhere, Lambourn, Middleham, Moulton, Newmarket, any of those big training centres, but the school sent me to Captain Foster.

“England was my land of opportunity. You’ve got to remember that all the good horses in Ireland were being sold to England. It’s only the last 10 years that Irish domination has come.

“It will come back around: I have to keep telling myself that otherwise, I’d have to give up! But it will come back round. Sport goes in cycles,” says O’Brien.

What has remained constant, however, are ties to the place he grew up in and what he considers the values he learned there.

“I was very fortunate to grow up in a lovely part of the world, on the edge of Lough Derg. Dad worked for CIÉ for 30 years, driving a bus, while Mam was the breakfast cook at the hotel in the village. My father was a hard worker. He headed into Limerick on his motorbike every day come hail, rain, or shine to drive his bus. They gave us a great work ethic,” he once recalled.

It could be apt then if Crambo was the one to break his festival duck in a race where perseverance and embracing the long haul are so vital.

“I think Cheltenham will suit Crambo and bring out some further improvement. He needs to improve again after the Long Walk. There are other horses in there that have been there and got the T-shirt, but Crambo has youth on his side, and we think he is a very good horse,” he says.

Such a success will be celebrated in Gloucestershire with some definite Tipperary vigour.

Brian O'Connor

Brian O'Connor

Brian O'Connor is the racing correspondent of The Irish Times. He also writes the Tipping Point column