The incredulous look on Paul Gilligan’s face when he hears the silly question is enough to confirm that the famous old dirge was right all along.
“A lake? That’s not a lake, it’s a field that’s been flooded. This place gets really soaked,” he says. The Galway-based trainer is standing in his rain-soaked yard, about four miles from Athenry where the fields really do lie low. Very low.
Gilligan
is back at work in the muddy prose of his winter gallops shortly after a weekend of joyous family poetry at Cheltenham. His talented staying hurdler Buddy One
, ridden by his son Jack, won the Paddy Power Games Handicap Hurdle at the November meeting, snugly and in a decent time, and the victory has stirred Gilligan’s optimism for an exciting future for the horse. His plan of attack could include the Hatton’s Grace at Fairyhouse on Sunday but he could also wait for the Grade 1 three-miler at Leopardstown at Christmas.
“The way he won at Cheltenham I think he’ll improve again,” he says. “He has to go up to Graded level now, I wouldn’t ask him to run in a handicap. He gave two stone to the horse that was second at Cheltenham but he has to step up now and I think he has it in him. He has smashing owners, Tom Quinn, John Joe McGrath and Eddie Lynch, and I’d love to give it a right go for them.”
Buddy One ridden by Jack Gilligan wins at Cheltenham
Buddy One and Jack Gilligan come home alone at Cheltenham to spark big dreams in the yardCredit: John Grossick
The depth of family engagement in the Gilligan training empire has the warmth of Walton Mountain rather than the cold sterility of a Kardashian palace. His gallops are on land at the back of his parents' home, across a narrow road from his own place, where members of his wife Natalie’s family have just arrived over from Wales to help decorate his bathroom. Meanwhile, his father, Eamonn, is hard at work on a digger, scraping out a foundation for a new surface at the entrance to the stable. His three older sons, Liam, Jack and Danny, are all making their way as jockeys and it would be no surprise if the youngest, Ollie, took the same direction of travel when the time is right.
Danny in particular is flying high having just won the Troytown Chase on Coko Beach for Gordon Elliott and, although their parents strive to be modestly nonchalant about all their son’s achievements, they can’t quite manage to disguise their understandable pride.
“Do you see that couch behind you?” says Paul, now moved inside for a warming cup of tea, and pointing at an experienced-looking piece of furniture in his living room. “That’s where they cut their teeth, on the back of that. They absolutely battered it. They all had rocking horses and they hammered them too. They were hard to get to school. One or two of them decided that mitching [truancy] was a better option.”
“Danny is a very dedicated child. Even from a young age, didn’t matter what sport he played,” Natalie interjects, offering a mother’s perspective. “He was a good hurler, but he always hated losing. You try not to think about the risks, you just have to let it go or you’d be a nervous wreck. But you get used to it. They all went hunting from a young age and they were always on their ponies. I just think the nerves are not as bad with me because they’ve done it all their lives.”
Risk is a topical subject in Galway racing circles at present and Gilligan adds in passing that he will donate his training gains from Cheltenham to Graham Lee’s fund.
He first learned the game at the yards of his near-neighbours Pat Kelly and Pauline Gavin before taking out a licence in the late 1990s. Success was not immediate and he had to wait until 2001 for his first win with Broadstone Road at Kilbeggan, his breakthrough horse who went on to win seven times. He has proved he can train good horses if he gets them, winning a Powers Gold Cup and Thyestes Chase with Jadanli and the Albert Bartlett at the Cheltenham Festival with Berties Dream in 2010. But frustration soon followed that win.
