From an Irish National paper:
O'Hare's turn-up for the books
Barney O'Hare and his trainer son Michael really hit the jackpot at Naas.
Sunday November 08 2009
BARNEY stung the bookmakers again last Saturday. The gambler/bookmaker-turned-trainer won a relative fortune and revels in telling you how he did it in his signature Ulster lilt.
Though his son Michael is the registered trainer, O'Hare Snr is very heavily involved. "People say that I'm training the horses but I tell them: 'I'm training the trainer'. And I tell you something: He's going to the top."
The duo's hat-trick at Naas last Saturday was a phenomenal achievement and their minor gripe that it did not garner many plaudits in the media is understandable. Paul Carberry's failure to pass a breathalyser test commanded more headlines, yet little was made of a trainer with only one previous winner to his name scoring a treble.
Not merely a treble -- but three winners from three runners. Consider that two of them had not even run this season and the bottomless conditions at Naas and you get the picture: little wonder other trainers were flabbergasted.
"Homer Scott said to me 'it's hard enough to get three runners to the track, not to mind three winners'," Barney recalls. "Tom Taaffe was like a child after racing, he was so excited by what we'd done. Ted Walsh said to me: 'Ye took the cake, the candles and the icing with ye too!'"
While Barney's face is familiar to many a racegoer due to his bookies' pitch at the track and his involvement in Bar One Racing, very little was known of Michael. He admits that, even last Saturday, fellow trainers were shaking his hand not only to extend congratulations but to introduce themselves.
He is also a more reserved individual than his father, judging by the conversation we enjoyed over the breakfast table at their Castlebellingham stables. Between the three of us, owner Eugene Kavanagh and two farriers, Charlie and Jimmy, there was no shortage of takers when the rashers were passed around -- or conversation. But Michael lets the horses talk for him.
The Newry native assumed the reins after Daniel Barry and John Larkin had initially enjoyed stints training from Barney's stables, nestled close to the Irish Sea. Both Barry and Larkin saddled winners in the familiar colours of Barney's wife Tracey, but one day the millionaire bookmaker arrived upon a moment of clarity in the sobering surrounds of Sedgefield racecourse.
"Michael was assistant trainer at the time," he recalls. "We'd just put a lovely concrete base in the yard at that point, to put in another 25 stables. There we were after racing, the two of us, sitting on the steps, and the two horses that day had run really badly.
"I said, 'son, I tell you what we'll do: we'll not build any boxes for more horses -- we'll just get rid of the **** that we have. I think we've enough boxes'. The boxes were never built."
Michael O'Hare took over from Larkin last year as a restricted trainer and his first winner, as
befits the brash ambition of the family, was at the Punchestown festival last April. Montana Slim, sent off at 25/1, took care of his 24 rivals by 11 lengths -- but Barney reveals that Montana Slim was supposed to form only half of what would have been one of the greatest coups in the annals of Irish racing.
"What's a big plus for Michael now is that he's dealing with second- and third-season horses that are ready to roll. We went for one of the biggest touches of all time last year with Montana Slim at Punchestown and Bale O'Shea at Kelso. Michael and myself were in Kelso. I was standing in the Kelso grooms' room and never was I so confident to be in the stand after Montana had won. I said to myself 'how far will Bale O'Shea win?'
"I was so disappointed, so stung, when he came second: I thought he'd bolt up. In hindsight, he was just a weak horse. He's a monster now, though, in comparison."
Both horses played their part on Saturday. The O'Hares' first victory was to get their three entries declared on the one card, which is far easier said than done nowadays given the constraints of the balloting system.
Early on Saturday morning, the elder O'Hare paced around the yard to ensure all was well with the runners, followed soon afterwards by his son, who remarkably only turned 25 on Friday. For whatever reason, Barney felt an unusual calm. "I just said to Michael: 'Son, I don't even care if I back them. We're going to enjoy this day'."
Barney secured the companionship for the day of Tommy Dollard, one of his main men in Bar One's Dundalk headquarters, even though the latter was scheduled to work. (It is one thing a friend pleading with you to take the day off, quite another the owner of the company itself.)
As they set off for Naas, Barney began to rummage in his pocket. "I'd a wee plastic bag of money in it -- I don't even know how it got there -- and there was a couple of grand in it. I gave it to Tommy and I said 'nobody'll be backing these horses at the racetrack so you'll have it to yourself. You can have a couple of grand on the three of them as you like'.
"I told him mid-way through racing to have a €200 each-way treble. As it happens, he ended up putting the whole lot of the other €1,600 on Montana Slim, because he adores that horse, and a bulk of the winnings on Bale O'Shea."
By the time the field was down at the tape for the closing bumper, Sweet Shock had been gambled into 3/1 favourite, primarily due to bookmakers attempting to restrict losses, having already laid the first two legs of the treble. Barney had earlier been talking to Joe Murphy, whose sole representative on the card had long since run.
However, the Fethard trainer had decided to hang around for the last race. It was Murphy who suggested to Barney that he should fork out €120,000 for Sweet Shock as a yearling, the fee so high because the horse is a half-brother to Sweet Wake.
Sweet Shock certainly was not aptly-named with a view to the panic that engulfed Paddy Power's on-course shop: after his five-length success, they calculated that Dollard's each-way treble alone cost them €92,570.
Murphy, meanwhile, was stunned and thrilled in equal measure. "Michael, I can't get over how easy your horses settled today," he said to the fledgling trainer -- an endorsement of O'Hare's commitment to using slow work predominantly to train his horses.
For those on-course bookmakers who accepted Dollard's business, the shock was not so sweet either. Many of them have ostracised Barney O'Hare and effected an embargo on his pitch because of his decision to stand at Dundalk despite an ongoing dispute between the Irish National Bookmakers' Association and the racetrack.
When Dollard went to collect off one layer, he was apologetic. "I'm sorry sir, I don't have that much in the satchel; will a cheque do?" The easy-going Dollard had no objection so the bookmaker asked him: "Who should I make it out to?"
"Barney O'Hare."
By Dollard's account, the bookmaker might just as well have swallowed a lemon whole. Barney admits that Saturday "was quite a good day" in a gambling sense, but is more truthful about its emotional value. "It was special, one-in-a-million stuff really."
One of Ireland's youngest trainers -- who has four paying owners other than his mother -- aspires to becoming a fully licensed one as soon as he can. He is learning every day, gave up on drink nearly four years ago and now dedicates himself to his girlfriend, children and 21 horses. Over time, much more will be known of Michael O'Hare.
He will not get ahead of himself either. Barney opted to celebrate Saturday's miracle by having a couple of jars in Eugene Kavanagh's Glasnevin pub, where apparently they sell more ****ss per square floor yard than anywhere in Ireland. From the punter's graveyard to The Gravedigger's, with a treble in between.
Earlier last week, as it was beginning to sink in, a fax came through to Bar One's Dundalk headquarters.
To Barney O'Hare, Well done to you and your family on your impressive treble in Naas on Saturday. Don't do it too often!
Yours sincerely,
Willie and Jackie Mullins
He is talking about getting it framed.
Sunday Independent |
