Louise Lyons

I grew up on The Wirral near Liverpool and my parents have a farm there on which my mother runs a livery yard. Myself and my two sisters learned to ride on ponies and later I got into showing horses and then eventing. My father is from County Tyrone and his own father was involved with horses and greyhounds. I reached a good level in eventing and, as I had an Irish passport through my father, I competed for Ireland at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing which was a memorable experience.

I used to regularly come over to Goresbridge sales with my mother, who was buying show horses and eventers there, from when I was about sixteen so I had some knowledge of the area around Kilkenny and around ten years ago I made the decision to move to Ireland. I rented my own yard for a while and enjoyed going out with some of the local hunts. It was through the latter that I met my partner Nicky Teehan and eventually we joined forces and did a lot of pretraining and selling on young horses. We have three young children, Nancy, Robin and Nicky George and they’re all riding ponies already.

I suppose my forte is getting horses jumping correctly and with confidence and that was why people sent horses to us. Nicky bred Galway Plate winner Shanahan’s Turn and Grand Sefton winner Hogan's Height and we did all the groundwork with them. Poker Party, who was bought by Nicky, was another that we pre-trained and he won a Kerry National. A couple of years ago we had a few horses that we hadn’t managed to sell as three-year-olds and I decided to take out a restricted licence. I’ve got good advice and help from trainers like Colin Bowe and Edward O’Grady. I used to help and coach Edward’s children with their riding, and preparation for eventing, and he lets me use his gallops from time to time.

We’re based at Bluegate Stud at Kilmanagh in Co Kilkenny where we have plenty of space and good facilities for the horses. We put in a new deep sand gallop during lockdown and we have a big 75m x 45m outdoor arena with showjumps, hurdles, fences and an area for gridwork. We also have a loose-jumping arena, cross country fences and a river to walk in and cool them off. We have jockeys who come in to us like Richie Condon, Daniel Holden, Jamie Hayes and Tom Hamilton. I ride out every day with the jockeys and jump all of the horses so I get a feel of their 'way of going' and I teach them to jump correctly using gridwork. I make sure all the horses are warmed up correctly in an outline by all the riders every day and that they ride the horses 'in front of the leg', which is to say the horse is responding to contact from the rider's leg aids the moment it's applied and is going forward willingly.

In the week Nicky will bring horses to work or school at various gallops to suit the horses' individual needs. It's great to get them used to going to different places. The Curraghmore gallops in Waterford or Kieran Purcell’s place at Windgap are a couple of places where the horses would be brought for a day away.

Espion Du Chenet has obviously been a brilliant horse for us. Nicky bought him as a yearling in France but he wasn’t a sales horse as he didn’t grow much and wasn’t a great walker so he sent him to Liz and Mathieu Palussiere and he won over hurdles at Auteuil. We couldn’t find a buyer for him after that and he had a few issues so we brought him back home. He‘s really thrived over fences and was my first winner when landing a handicap chase at Naas in December 2020. He was off 90 that day and, after winning four more races since then, he’s up to a mark of 125 now. He enjoys his racing and we’ve kept him fairly busy over the past eighteen months but he normally bounces out of his races really well.

The plan is to bring him to Gowran on Saturday week for a Grade B handicap chase and hopefully he can keep improving. I did bring him to Aintree before Christmas and he didn’t fire but I’d love to go back there with him and we might do a few things differently next time. Aintree is close to where I grew up and I always used to go there on the first day of the Grand National meeting with a group of friends from the Cheshire Forest Hunt.

Kells Priory won at Gowran on Thyestes Day and ran well to be third there on Red Mills Day. He’s a smallish individual but Nicky liked his pedigree and I thought he was a good walker so we managed to buy him as a three-year-old for 10,000 Euros at Goffs and he’s progressing well now. We’re not in a position to buy the really well-bred, scopey types but Nicky studies the pedigrees and I assess the conformation and we seem to be doing all right with our purchases. Willaston cost 5,000 as a foal and he won a maiden hurdle for us at Gowran in the autumn on his first racecourse start and Judicial Law is a horse we sold on after he won a Killarney bumper last year and he’s won two of his last three starts over hurdles for Jonjo O'Neill.

I'm really enjoying the training and I’m in the process of applying for a full licence. We'd like to attract new owners and we can assist them in buying horses at sales. With six winners on the board this season, I’d like to think we’ve shown we can do the job with the horses that we’ve had so far and the aim would be to take our training business to the next level.