Philip Rothwell

I was born in Tinahely, Co Wicklow and my dad is a dairy farmer who brought me to point-to-points every Sunday. From there the interest grew, I guess. I started off riding ponies in a local riding school when I was probably six or seven but basically, I was mad into all sports. My mum became a full-time taxi driver and brought me everywhere - pony riding lessons, swimming, rugby and soccer. Then I went to secondary school in King's Hospital in Dublin and played a lot of rugby there. While I was there, I did my work experience in Willie Mullins' at 14 and loved it. As soon as I left secondary school I went to agricultural college then in Kildalton down in Kilkenny. When I was down there, I spent most of my time in Aidan O'Brien's when he was champion jumps trainer. I'd go in there every morning and ride out a few lots before college. My college work experience was spent then in Jessica Harrington's, so I think it was obvious where my interest lay.

I came home at 20 to pre-train a few horses and the pre-trainers seemed to do really well, they went on to run very well on the racecourse shortly after leaving me which encouraged me to get my licence. I started off in six converted chicken sheds and cattle sheds over in my dad's dairy yard. From there, he helped me build a purpose-built yard about a mile over the road which is where I am based now. We are here in Fairwood Stables about 15 years now.

I was the youngest licensed trainer at 21 in 1999 and I was on the first ever racehorse trainers' course. I was licensed in March, and in April I had my first runner at the Punchestown Festival. Then my second runner was a bumper winner in Down Royal and it snowballed. I started gaining quite a bit of momentum quite quickly. For a number of years, the yard grew very quickly, probably too quick too young. It maybe got a little out of control as in we were building very, very fast - too many horses and not enough experience dealing with business. In the meantime, I also got married and had a young family. There was a huge amount going on all at once. In hindsight, it was probably a little out of control. Then we hit very hard years where the boom went to bust and we lost a considerable number of owners, not through being disloyal more that they couldn't afford to keep up the same number of horses in training.

I had two extremely good horses in training, but we were down to maybe a number of 15. One horse had been placed in an Irish Grand National (in 2014) as a six-year-old for me, Saoirse Dun, and I had another very good four-year-old Shirocco horse so I felt like we were about to start rebuilding all over again. Saoirse Dun had a heart attack one morning coming in off the gallops and a number of weeks later the Shirocco horse, who I thought was the best horse I had ever put a saddle on, broke his hind leg. We lost the two of them in the space of about eight weeks. We were down to about 10 or 15 horses in training of a very poor standard about seven years ago. Out of hard work and good support from owners we built it back up again and the last three years have been amazing, one year is getting better than another.

We would buy a lot of horses ourselves. If we were relying on what was sent in to train, it would be hard to sustain the level of results we are getting again now. When I go out and buy my own, we have done very well with them. At the July Sales, I bought seven horses for a sum total of in and around €14,000. Some of them are gorgeous horses and I would be very disappointed if we didn't have at least five out of the seven winning races. I put them into syndicates and individual owners. In the last two years, I have a number of supporters spending a little bit more money as well and buying horses with form. We have bought a number of horses with form from the point-to-point fields, not for huge money and we have done very well with them too. Between the stores and the horses from the point-to-point fields, they are my main source.

I have 49 stables in the main racing yard and we have 15 stables in what I call my my young horse yard where they start off. As they are vaccinated and everything, they move up to the racing yard. We tend to keep full all year round. I have two neighbours who do my breaking and then they come back to the farm. We are open to more owners and horses but, at the same time, I'm working hard to try and increase the quality, and I don't really want to increase the number. I have an exceptional staff, the lads working with me are second to none. We have a pretty small team and I don't want to change that. It is not that I don't have ambition - I would have a huge amount of ambition, being champion trainer in Ireland is not one of them. I don't want to get into the number's thing, but I would definitely like to increase the quality. I have had a Cheltenham Festival winner before, but I would dearly like to train a graded winner in Cheltenham and in other places like that. That is where we are striving to go to - try and get a better standard of horse in so as to get to run in some of those better races.

Native Jack and Black Apalachi were my biggest winners in the early days. Native Jack won the Cross Country at Cheltenham (in 2006) in syndicate colours. How he came about was I saw him point-to-pointing and he was recommended to me as a hunter chaser, but the cross country race immediately kicked into my head. I went to see him and I bought him for 20 grand directly from the owner. I went home and made four phone calls to four individual owners recommending him as a Cheltenham horse at £5,000 a man. All four came on board. We definitely expected a big run from Black Apalachi in the Grade One Paddy Power Chase (at Leopardstown in 2005). He had won the previous year in a Grade 2 hurdle at Naas and had gone to Cheltenham over hurdles, and we brought him back the following year and went chasing. He won over two miles six furlongs (at Thurles) and then put up a huge performance in the Paddy Power. John Cullen was very strong on him.

What drove me for 10 years was pure hunger and dedication to try and get back to the level we are at now. Also, a young family and having to provide for them. I only look forwards, I don't look backwards, through the good times and the bad. Every day I get up, I try and think about how I can make tomorrow better. I'm in a fortunate position at the moment as I have a lot of support but, at the end of the day, I'm still going buying cheap horses and selling them and still looking for that superstar. I don't have huge backers behind me, but I do have a lot of exceptional support. I have a couple of very exciting young horses for this year going forward. I've a horse called Captains Nephew who won a maiden hurdle very well at Clonmel in February and I would love to think that he would turn into a nice chaser. I ran a horse called Quarry Rocco in a maiden hurdle in Galway and he finished fourth. I would hope he would go on to achieve this winter as well.

I have three teenagers and people have asked me over the years if I would encourage my kids to get into the industry. The answer is, no I don't, which would surprise a lot of people. I always say that you would need to absolutely love it, you put in so many hours in the day and the financial reward is very difficult to achieve. I do really, really love it. I would hate to pass it on to a family member that didn't because I would see it as a poisoned chalice. If one of my kids really loved it, and really wanted to do it, I'd recommend it but outside of that definitely not. From my side, the enjoyment I get out of winners is incredible and I get a huge kick out of training racehorses. From a family perspective, it has been good to us.