BRIAN O'CONNORtalks to the legendary Curragh trainer as he prepares for the flat season while retaining an interest in the jumps scene
IN AN age when you can buy a book on how to mow a lawn, it is not unreasonable to expect there to be masses of “how to” books on just about anything. Not for the first time, though, Dermot Weld has spotted a gap in the market.
It is 57 years since the hall-of-fame American trainer Preston Burch first published Training Thoroughbred Racehorses, a tome that has stood the test of time – and reprints – to become something of a racing bible.
It apparently remains the first thing Michael Dickinson, the mercurial Englishman based in the US, gives to anyone starting a job as his assistant.
But it remains an essentially American piece of work, geared towards the demands of oval racing on dirt in America.
“It’s an excellent book, but it was written a long time ago,” Weld said yesterday. “And there’s no European version. I’ve always felt there should be something like it available here, so that anybody could go into a library and just find out. It needs to be done.”
And if there is a man to do it, then surely it is the legendary trainer who has conquered the world from his Curragh base, and who just happens to have proven himself on the writing front too.
In racing terms, 2009 will always be judged the year of Sea The Stars, but it was remarkable for Weld also.
Vintage Crop told the story of his famous 1993 success in the Melbourne Cup, a victory that quite literally changed the face of the racing world, and which cemented Weld’s place in the sport’s history.
It took two years of work that represented an outstanding achievement by someone still at the peak of what is a famously time-consuming and pressurised profession. Weld, however, has always been a long way from the caricature of a bandy-legged horse-tangler.
Writing a book was a long-held dream. His interest in literature was famously illustrated just minutes after that famous Melbourne Cup when he quoted long passages of the legendary bush poet Banjo Patterson to a startled Australian press corps.
“Friends told me to put it down on paper, all the excitement, and all the difficulties, going where no man had tread before, so I did. It is very simply written, maybe too much, but I did it the way I did,” he recounted.
“Basically I wrote whenever I got a chance. I didn’t really bother in the summer time because it was just too busy, so a lot was done during the winter, in the evenings, sometimes before evening stables started.
“I know you’re supposed to sit down in the mornings and come up with a method, but there was none of that. It flowed, and I found it easy,” he added.
The process was smooth enough for him not to rule out another project, maybe along the Burch lines, which could guarantee sales around the world. After all, with top-flight wins in the US, Australia, the Far East and throughout Europe, there will be no shortage of people willing to cough up to find out how Weld has managed it all.
Go And Go remains the only European horse to win an American classic, and Media Puzzle is the only other European raider to win in Flemington. And despite the outside interests, their trainer remains intensely ambitious, on the very wide racing front.
Weld’s National Hunt record is often overlooked in the shadow of his achievements on the flat, but he has trained a Cheltenham winner, an Irish National winner and won many other major pots over obstacles. This winter he has a small but select team headed by Rite Of Passage, who is rated by bookmakers among the best Irish novice hurdlers despite not having jumped a hurdle in public yet.
“He will probably go to Leopardstown the weekend after next for a maiden hurdle. We’ll get that out of the way first before deciding about Cheltenham,” Weld said, before making no such reservations about his impressive bumper winner Elegant Concorde: “A very smart horse – definitely Cheltenham material.”
All his jumpers have been ticking over on the Curragh’s polytrack gallop despite the cold snap that has only seemed to symbolise the gloomy financial mood enveloping the sport in this country.
“I believe in positivity and confidence and I’m very positive about racing here. It will come, though, because there are so many hard-working, good people in it. Racing is a survivor,” said Weld.
His attention, even in January, is still focused on the 2010 flat campaign which begins next month.
“We have a really balanced team. Famous Name was second in two Group One’s last year so we will try and get his head in front in a Group One this year. Chinese White is back with us, as is Grace O’Malley.
“We also have a good horse in Libano who came to us from Italy. He looks a sprinter, seven-furlong type who I hope gets to Group One level. He beat the Guineas runner- up (Rayeni) last season and I think he can go all the way to top.”
It all sounds like there will be plenty more material to draw on during winter evenings in front of the computer screen.
