Brian McMahon© Photo Healy Racing
I'm a proud Clare man but my yard is just across the border near Tubber in Co Galway.
My family is steeped in hurling and I won a minor All-Ireland with Clare and a county championship with our club Kilmaley.
I'm a qualified biochemist and have been combining working at that, and training, over the last number of years but now I’m full-time at the training. I got a call from my boss in January and he said “this working from home doesn’t suit everyone, I want you back in the office”. I said to him “it suits me just fine” but he wasn’t for changing, so that was it for me and I decided I wanted to give training a real rattle.
We’re up in numbers at the yard and have been getting good support from plenty of people. At the moment it’s just myself and a girl called Esther Wright who spent many years in Jackdaws Castle with ‘Duke’ Nicholson, Alan King and Jonjo O’Neill. She’s a godsend and is in six mornings a week and, between the pair of us, we ride out seven or eight lots a day. I hope to get another person in part-time to share the workload.
This year has been about trying to work out how to deal with a bigger number of horses which I think just gives you a better chance of
getting your hands on some good ones. It’s a calculated gamble but I deliberately didn’t do the sums on what it might all cost because you’d never take the risk if you did that.
This is the life I want. I know it’s all-consuming but when I had the two jobs, I felt it was impossible to do either of them quite as I wanted. There is some anxiety when you don’t have that steady wage coming in but I don’t regret the decision at all.
Last season my stats were quite respectable, seven winners from eighty-odd runners, but it’s all about trying to get your hands on the good ones and hopefully getting a chance to go to the big meetings. I had a couple of years with Nicky Henderson during the Sprinter Scare era and got a taste of Cheltenham then as I did a few years later with my own horse Powersbomb who ran well at the festival. Having a horse over there for the week of the festival and riding him out in
Powersbomb© Photo Healy Racing
the morning and the whole buzz around the place both before and during racing, that’s where I’d love to be again. I do a bit of coaching with a hurling team but I suppose I’m missing that direct involvement that I had as a player and the excitement of the big days. Being involved hands-on with a horse during Cheltenham week is comparable and that is what we’re in the game for.
Obviously if I got a nice horse you’d have to consider offers as well just to survive and keep the business going, but I’d love to be going back to Cheltenham with a contender some day. The aim is to, even fleetingly, dine at the top table with a nice horse.
I’m in a sort of mini-Lambourn where I’m based with the likes of Derek O’Connor and his brother Pauric’s yards nearby, also John Staunton whose point-to-pointers have been very successful in the last couple of years. Eoin Mahon and Diarmuid Moloney come in to school for me and are a great help. Everyone in the locality is very helpful and they all wish you well, that’s what they’d tell you to your face anyway!
There’s a social aspect too about having other horse people around and we’d often meet up in the Burren Inn in Tubber or Whelan’s in Shanaglish after one of the local point-to-points and have a bit of craic. It’s a good way of making contacts and getting to know people who might fancy having a horse with you.
My latest winner was The Eye Of Tulla at Ballinrobe a couple of weeks ago and hopefully things will continue to build and the bigger numbers will result in us getting a few nice horses to go to war with. I’m under no illusions about how competitive the game is but I’m up for the challenge. I always was when I was on the hurling pitch and I'm no different now.
Brian McMahon was in conversation with Mark Nunan.
