Fergal Birrane

I’m based at Killala House in Co. Mayo which was bought by Donal MacAuliffe and Anoj Don in 2014 and they’ve done a fantastic job restoring the house, the gardens and also the historic yard which I lease from them. They’ve brought everything back to the way it was when the house was built in 1893 by Lady Knox Gore and racehorses were trained successfully from this yard from an early stage.

A horse called Royal Arch was trained here and he won the Gold Cup in Lingfield in 1901 and our latest winner, Tamazu, is in the stable that he occupied all those years ago.

I was a permit holder here previously, with mostly jumps horses, and I’ve seen three owners come and go from the house but it’s great to see that the estate is in safe hands at the moment.

I’m from the town in Killala and my father and mother had a grocery shop there. My grand-uncles, the MacGowans, were jockeys in America and my cousin Padraic Judge is an international showjumper. So there are horses in the blood and I started off in showjumping myself and had a couple of stables at the back of the shop. I was also a riding instructor for nine years and then was bitten by the racing bug.

The guys owned some Flat horses when they arrived and they asked me to train them. They have been great supporters of mine and we’ve enjoyed plenty of success together. There are spectacular gardens at the front of the house which are maintained by staff and it’s a beautiful setting

We have beaches nearby where we do a lot of our fast work. I ride them out along with Christy Burke who is a very experienced rider and a great help to me. If you buy a handicapper that’s been working on gallops the whole time, getting them to the beach completely changes them. If they have any joint or leg problems, walking them up to their chests in the water is great because it’s like aqua-swimming and they’ve to push and use their backs. It’s like a natural spa for them. We also have our own one-mile polytrack gallop at the back of the estate. It’s adjacent to the Mayo Greenway and we often have interested onlookers who can take a breather from their walk, or cycle, to observe proceedings when we’re cantering the horses there.

Tamazu is owned by my wife, Fiona, and we bought him online from the Book 2 Sales at Tattersalls Ireland in September 2020 when the pandemic was at its height. We also bought Dubirango, who’s won at Dundalk for us, the same evening and we got the two of them together for around three thousand Euros. We didn’t even see Tamazu, apart from watching him walking around the ring, but we went on his pedigree, really. He’s from a good Newtown Anner Stud family and his half-sister by Kodi Bear is a promising two-year-old for Johnny Murtagh. Another half-brother Nibiru won over 1m6f.

Going on his breeding, we thought Tamazu would want a mile but we use the Arioneo heart rate monitor technology and that helped us figure out his trip. After running him over six and seven furlongs, we worked him with the Arioneo on the beach and he did a great time, so we said we’d drop him back to five and we were thrilled when he won a five-furlong maiden at Tipperary earlier this month. The locals always keep an eye on our horses so we got plenty of congratulations over the following days as he was returned at 100/1. One woman in the post office put her arms around me and gave me the biggest of hugs! I think she had a Euro each-way on it!

We’ve had plenty of offers for him since the win but we’ve held onto him for the moment as we think he can progress further. He’s a horse that loves good ground because he has such a good step. We’re going back to Tipperary on Friday for a Listed race and we’re happy to let Jack Kearney ride him again, even without his claim. Jack is a brilliant rider who has been doing very well for us lately and he knows the horse well.

It took me a while to get used to the heart rate technology but you can ring the company in Paris and they’re very helpful to explain things. Because the surface changes on the beach every day, and it would be softer some days, my fear was that I was doing too much work with the horses and I found the monitors very useful in that regard to tell me what amount of work was enough.

I’ve done very well at Dundalk and the people there look after me very well. It’s a four-and-half hour journey from here and they often facilitate me in leaving the horses at the track overnight. I stay in the Crowne Plaza Hotel nearby rather than travelling and getting back home at two in the morning. There’s a great camaraderie at Dundalk and I’m actually looking forward to the nights getting shorter and getting back there under the lights. An all-weather track at Tipperary would be great for us too if it comes to fruition as it’s only a two and a half-hour journey there .

I’ve a nice three-year-old by Camelot and I’m looking forward to running him over hurdles during the winter. We turn out the horses as much as we can and give them plenty of individual attention.

For the smaller owners and trainers, I think it would be a big help if prize money was extended down to seventh or eighth as that three or four hundred Euros would at least pay for the diesel. Being able to recoup some expenses at least gives owners an incentive to keep going.

I would love to see some races for horses rated up to a maximum of 50, or maybe 55, just to give those horses a chance to get into races because they often struggle to get a run in the 47-65 handicaps and that is very disheartening for owners. Sometimes a horse with that mark has just needed time, or has picked up an injury, and can improve dramatically if they’re given the chance to mature and these horses, and their owners, deserve opportunities to move up the ranks rather than being excluded from the sport.