Johnny Murtagh

Things are going very well at the minute with seven winners already this month but that is what you want in this game. The really pleasing thing is that all the horses are running well and even those that are not winning are still running well so we are delighted.

It is a bit of an adventure this training game. You don’t know what is going to happen every day so I just take I every day as it comes.

You can be planning races for these horses and it is a day by day process but then things can change and you have to go with it. I wasn’t planning to run Near Kettering again at Limerick on Saturday for example but he came out of his race on Thursday so well that I took a chance and went again and thankfully it worked out.

Everything changes but I think patience is the key and I’m working hard on that part of it. The targets and races are always there for the horses and after that you just hope that everything goes right and it works. From the start of this year they have been running consistently well and holding their form which is great.

I’ve got a lot of nice owners who enjoy their racing and that is important and I’m very grateful to all those who support me. It’s nice to sit down with them at the start of the year and know what they want. We all want to have Group horses, of course, but they can’t all be Group horses and it is just nice to know what they would like and try to fit that in… where they are from, where they’d like to see their horses running and just little things like that. But at the end of the day it is all about the results and what is right for the horse and if you are getting the results everybody is happy.

We’ve a lot of different owners and we’ve got about 13 horses more this year than we did last year and a lot of two-year-olds. I thought this year would be a bit of a building year with all the two-year-olds.

We are running a lot of two-year-olds to see where they fit in and two of them have won. It’s hard to win two-year-old races in Ireland but we are building towards the future and with the two-year-olds that is where the patience really comes in.

Having a treble last week at Leopardstown was a brilliant day for us, for the whole team. I go there hoping to win five races and that is always my mindset so Orla would say to me that I’m always going to go home disappointed then if you think you can win every race but when you have three winners it is just great satisfaction. It’s a different kind of feeling to riding but it is still that feeling of winning and it is all about winning.

I’ve got a lot of good lads working with me and to have good horses you need to have good riders. We’ve got Niall McCullagh in with us, Shane Foley comes in, Shane Kelly, Ross Coakley, Denis Linehan, Tom Madden is with us twice a week, Conor Hoban does a bit of work with our horses that are not up to cantering yet and we also have Yutaro Nonaka from Japan who has fitted in very well. The whole team is working very well together and we have Valerie Keatley who is the head girl and Oleg who does all our travelling. We’ve got a good system there and it is a system we believe in.

I was living on the Curragh for years and I didn’t realise what a great set up we have on our doorstep. You’ve got woodchip gallops, sand, poly, grass, we’ve got everything you want and if you can’t train winners on the Curragh it’s not the Curragh’s fault. It’s a brilliant facility and great to have it.

Unfortunately, we’ll be without Valerie for a little while but thankfully everyone seems to be happy with her. She got a fall last week at home and she got a bad concussion but she’s sitting up now in the bed and able to eat but thanks to Dr. Adrian McGoldrick and the team in Naas Hospital she’s being well looked after and the scans are all clear so everybody is very happy from that side but it will be a slow process and she’s a huge loss to us at home. We’ll be ready to welcome her back with open arms when she’s ready to come back.

I do miss riding on a week like this… Ascot was a very lucky place for me, it was always a great buzz. But the ITV Racing link has given me a real kick and I still feel a big part of Royal Ascot and it was great to be over there for the Epsom Oaks and the Epsom Derby. You are in the Parade Ring, you are meeting a lot of the old people you rode with or rode for and it doesn’t seem like work to me. I can speak about it from a jockeys point of view and I know exactly what is going on and now through a trainers mind as well. I just say it as I see it unfolding in front of me and I try give people a bit of an insight into what might be going on behind the scenes.

And it keeps me sharp and I’m able to watch other people and hopefully one day we’ll be coming back to Ascot with a big team and we’ll know what to do when we get there.

Every day in the racing game you are learning. Any day you think you know it all you are gone. Anything can happen on any given day and it’s an adventure.

Things are exactly where I want them at the moment and the last two years has been building towards this. Ger Lyons would be a good help to me and you just have to look at himself and Jim Bolger and how they backed themselves. They put their money where their mouth is and they do a very good job. I go out there and buy my own horses and it’s tough at times to keep putting your hand in your pocket but they are horses you want and it’s nice to have them. Of course we would love to be sent a load of nice horses but for now it is all about how we source the right horses. The next thing for us now is how do we source the better horse.

We’ve got 50 horses so I know that we are up against these big teams so I just look at the horses I have and my aim is to get every one of them to run to their ability. If I have a horse rated 70 I want him to run to his best and at the start of the year we look at what we have and make the best of that, the same with a horse rated 90. But you have to back yourself and I back myself. We can’t rest on our laurels and we’ll keep kicking… people want to be associated with winners and I love winning.