Ger Flynn© Photo Healy Racing
I'm from Edenderry, Co Offaly and we had ponies at home. Our next-door neighbour was Patrick Gilson who was a Flat jockey at the time. My brother, Michael, was very good friends with him and Michael started pony racing. We used to go every Sunday pony racing all over Ireland right up to the north and down to Cork. That's probably where I got the bug for the ponies. I was really light and they thought I was going to be the next jockey. My dad passed away in 1986 when I was 16 and I probably lost interest in the ponies, and my brother-in-law got me a job when I left school in the local mushroom factory up the road. One Saturday morning my brother was riding out for the great John Mulhern at the time and brought me over just to have a look around. Tommy Carmody was there and they had a really great team for such a small yard. They put me up on a pony and I rode out with Tommy Carmody, who was a legend, and the bug was back.
I went home and I realised that working in the mushroom factory, albeit a very good job and well paid, wasn't for me. I rang my brother-in-law to tell him I wouldn't be in work on Monday and I don't think he was best pleased! I started in John Mulhern's and, in fairness to Mr Mulhern, he lent me a car to get to work because it was 22 miles from Edenderry. I had a great year and a-half there as a stable lad. You wouldn't get to look after the really good horses, but it didn't matter. I remember the first year I was there David Parnell, God bless him, rode the winner of the Lincoln on Marvellous Marvin (Curragh 1989) for John. I was only a kid and that was a great day for us all. Patrick Gilson then rang me one day and said Con Collins was looking for a chap to do the travelling. I went over and met Mr Collins and spent nine great years there. There was a great bunch of people there with great camaraderie. Con had a great saying - if you made a mistake, put it down to experience as long as you didn't do it on purpose. The way he minded his horses, you learned so much.
I then decided I was going to go to Australia, I got a job working for David Hayes in Melbourne. However, John Mulhern asked me to go back and work winter/spring and bring Flashing Steel to Cheltenham. I went to Cheltenham and Flashing Steel finished fourth in the Foxhunters (1998). I met my wife Michelle there, she was working for the BBA at the time. Australia was soon out the gate! I ended up going over to Newmarket looking for a job as that is where she lived at the time. I remember walking down the street and I met an Irish guy, Walter Lynch, and he said to come and work for David Loder. I met Mr Loder and he gave me the job straight away. My first year I had the privilege of riding out Dubai Millennium. He was a big, huge horse and he looked slow and Mr Loder gave him plenty of time in the spring. It was only the backend of the summer that the horse started to come together. I remember one morning riding him a swinging canter up the Al Bahathri and John Ferguson (Godolphin) was there and he went extremely well. I had never ridden anything like that. David Loder said to me 'Well Gerry, is he that good?' I said 'Boss, it is like giving a Ferrari to a 10-year-old child. I shouldn't be riding him, he is so good'. David Loder then moved just south of Paris and he said to me 'You're coming'. You were on the team, so I went and I actually loved France and the way of life over there. The job didn't work out there, unfortunately, and we came back and spent another year in Newmarket with David. Newmarket is a great place and I lived in Stanley House, it was like an estate in the middle of a town. It was lovely, but I knew I wanted to bring up my children the way I was brought up back home. I was always good friends with Tony Keane in Ballinroe Transport and I used to do a bit of driving for him when he started. We always kept in contact and he rang me one day and said Jim Bolger was looking for a travelling head lad. I organised to meet Mr Bolger, I had known him from my time with John Mulhern and Con Collins.
Jim being Jim he asked all the questions about Sheikh Mohammed and Newmarket, and obviously coming from that operation I wanted to know what the remuneration package was. I said to the boss 'Just for the wife, what's the remuneration package?' He replied 'Ger, no-one ever goes hungry and no-one ever goes short!' I just knew straight away he was a man of values and he was loyal. I remember going home and my wife was keen to know the wages and contract and I said everything is okay and as soon as the child is born we are going. I don't think that went down too well! She moved from Newmarket to a place where the nearest shop was six miles away, it took her a while to settle in. Jim is very family-oriented and the first thing Mrs Bolger did was get the two kids Post Office books and she put some money in the Post Office.
I started in 2003 and Jim was having a bit of a quiet time at that time. We had a little two-year-old filly who just won her maiden up the Curragh called Alexander Goldrun. She wasn't over big and Jim used to ride her out himself. The following year it took off. The Hong Kong Cup that she won at Sha Tin in 2004 was probably one of my proudest moments because we were in the vets box, and it was underground a little bit, and you could just see out onto the winning post and they played the National Anthem. It was the first time the National Anthem was played at the Hong Kong Cup and it just put the hairs on the back of your neck, I would put it on a par with going over to Australia and winning races. We then had our first Galileo two-year-old in Heliostatic and then we had Teofilo. The next years were just golden years. You were turning up with New Approach and Trading Leather and you were travelling the world from Dubai to Hong Kong, France, the UK. I used to love going over for Champion Stakes Day in Newmarket and New Approach broke the track record (in Champion Stakes 2008). Kevin Manning loved Newmarket - he had the undulations and the track off to a tee. It was a home base for Kevin to be honest. You were always very confident in Kevin going out to ride a horse in Newmarket.
I'd say the big part of the success is Jim number one. It all starts with the man at the top. When I went there first, you buy into the beliefs of what he does and the way he trains. Everything is done by 8am. When I went there, he had five or six core lads from Pat O'Donovan, Adrian Taylor, Johnny Griffin, James Dowling and myself. You need a core of people and then it comes down to trust. You trust him and he trusts you. You get to know the way Jim thinks and what he expects. Anybody who left here over the years to go on and work at something else will tell you that the grounding they got stood to them. He would always say to us to let him know if we saw anything when travelling that would make it easier for us back home. For example, different feed pots, something for the walker, weighing scales. One year we were in Dubai and I went to the showjumping arena where Jessica Kurten was jumping. Jim could see on the TV that the surface was lovely. When I went up, it was actually a Polytrack surface and I brought home a sample for him.
I became chairman of the Irish Stable Staff Association in 2019 and it is very interesting. I'm trying to take the association in a little bit of a different direction, so that we have a little bit more for retired stud and stable staff. We are doing a lot for welfare in conjunction with Equuip. We are giving a lot of help to people with addictions and people with mental health issues. I can't stress enough how fantastic the team in Equuip are and we are very, very lucky to have them. Everything is passed confidentially to them and they are very professional.
Ger with Jockey Rory Cleary after a Jim Bolger-trained winner at Dundalk© Photo Healy Racing
I got elected last year as a board member of Horse Racing Ireland, the stablestaff nominee. It was daunting to be honest sitting around a boardroom coming from my background. The first meeting I met Nicky Hartery, our chairman, and he said 'We need people like you because you are at the coalface. You can tell us what is going wrong'. The minute he said that to me I thought I could fit in here. I can see every angle now - from the racecourse, from the owners, and a trainer's point of view. It is eye-opening to see the work that goes on behind the scenes. The one thing I find being on the board is that you can get your point across and they will listen. The one thing I am learning is that communication is key.
Working in the racing industry is a passion and a vocation. When the young people come into the yard they have a dream and the dream is to be the next champion. We have to nurture that and I think we are losing that a bit in today's game because of the pace of it. There's so much racing and everyone is so busy. I remember one trainer saying to me that he had 100 horses and not every one of them will win a race, but there is a home for every one of them and a purpose for them be it showjumping or cross country. People can come into the industry and end up working in Goffs as an auctioneer, working as a journalist, be a travelling head lad, a stable lad or as a vet to name a few jobs. There's so much to keep your hand in, it spreads out so much. There are paths for them, we just have to make them aware that those paths are there. There are great jobs and it is a great way of life. I wouldn't change it for the world, I couldn't see myself doing anything different.
Ger was in conversation with Michael Graham
