Dermot Weld is the only European who has trained a Melbourne Cup winner - and he has done it twice. Frank McNally meets the man who has found Irish solutions to the challenge of travelling horses.
It wasn't necessity that drove Dermot Weld to become the Christopher Columbus of the horse-racing world. For a man destined to train thoroughbreds, he had the good fortune to be born with the Curragh racecourse at the end of his driveway, where it remains today. He might well have taken the hint from fate and decided that travel was not meant for him.
But Weld had an urge to see foreign parts, and he was already an accomplished explorer when he set out on his famous voyage to Australia in 1993, armed only with the madcap theory that a European horse could win the Melbourne Cup. It was a journey into the unknown. There was so little contact between racing in the northern and southern hemispheres then, that the world might as well have been flat. And a key element in Weld's plan was that he would achieve his goal by abandoning the time-honoured convention of travelling west with Australian-bound horse cargoes. He would reach the antipodes by - wait for it - travelling east!
"The first thing we had to do was change the flight paths," he recalls now, at home in Rosewell House, the Curragh, where the key to the city of Melbourne is one of the many treasures from far-flung countries decorating his walls.
"Until then, horses always had to go the long way, via North America. I had to persuade the authorities to let us take the direct route. But this meant refuelling in the United Arab Emirates, and horses in transit had never been allowed to land there because of the fear of tick-borne diseases. The Australians were very strict about this - they're free of a lot of diseases, because of their isolation - so we had to convince them there was nothing to worry about. It took us a year to get agreement on the flight paths."
The other problem was quarantine. "European horses had to undergo a month's quarantine in Australia, during which they could only be walked. No gallops. And you couldn't win the Melbourne Cup like that." So, after more negotiations, a half-Irish solution to an Australian problem emerged. The horse would divide his quarantine between continents: two weeks in Ireland, followed by two weeks in Australia, on a deserted racecourse where he could gallop freely. "It took months to get that arrangement," says Weld.
Having stuck his neck out so far, he must have been confident about Vintage Crop's chances. "I was - very. He was an outstanding horse." But the gamble paid off famously. The Melbourne Cup is "the race that stops a nation", and in 1993, the result gave pause for thought to observers far beyond Australia. If comparisons with the discovery of the New World seem far-fetched, some racing commentators fetched even further for analogy, calling it the equine equivalent of the moon-landings.
Weld remains the only European trainer to win the race - he did it again in 2002, with Media Puzzle - although the list of triers lengthens yearly. And where once it was unthinkable to take a European thoroughbred to the Melbourne Cup, at least one Australian owner has now decided to send his horse to the race via the Curragh.
"We have an Australian filly in the stables here - Sunday Joy," confirms Weld, casually. "She's a Group 1 winner at home, so she's a good horse. She'll have a chance." He sounds nonchalant about the compliment Australia is paying him. But from a country where sporting chauvinism is matched only by sporting achievement, Sunday Joy's presence in Kildare is probably a bigger honour than the key to Melbourne.
Weld's foreign adventures - not just down under but in the US, Dubai, Hong Kong - have changed the shape of the horse world. Ten years ago, only two or three racehorses a year crossed continents. Now it's two to three hundred. And to some extent, he is a victim of his success. When he trained Dimitrova to win the American Oaks in California last year, and then followed this up by taking the Flower-Bowl (another big race for fillies) in New York, the owner decided the horse liked the US so much she should stay there.
He accepts the decision was good business: "Of course I was disappointed, but the logic was correct. She can win a lot more in the US. We don't have anything like the prize-money they have." Prize-money (along with the added value that big international wins give a horse) is the bottom line, and Weld never loses sight of it.
He can still quote the poems of Banjo Patterson from childhood memory - as he did to a charmed Melbourne audience in 1993: "On the outer Barcoo where the churches are few/And men of religion are scanty. On a road never crossed, 'cept by folk that are lost/One Michael Magee had a shanty " But for all the romance of his Australian adventures, Weld can also readily quote the Melbourne Cup's total prize value. At a whopping AU$4.6 million, it's a good line, too.
It's only when you query what makes him the world's leading authority on horse travel that the answers become vague. He talks of paying attention to the little things, understanding the psychology of a horse ("the whole key is training their minds"), the importance of good staff. He mentions dehydration and weight loss as the big problems with long-distance travel, and the importance of "blood pictures" in assessing the state of a horse. "A lot of it is just common sense," he claims. But when you ask how he got Dimitrova from Ireland to California six days before a race run in 100 degrees, and how she broke the track record, there's a little laugh and a flash of pride: "That's what they'd all like to know!"
One thing that's not a secret is the importance of local knowledge. Wherever he travels, there are three people he makes it his business to know: the best local vet, the best farrier, and the racetrack foreman. The last-mentioned is perhaps the most important member of the trinity, because he determines when you can gallop your horses on the course. "You need to train when it suits you. But everybody wants to work horses at 6 a.m. when it's cool, and not everybody can."
So how do you resolve this dilemma? Weld smiles: "You use your Irish charm." Despite the smile, he's serious. An Irish accent is still hard currency, he insists, especially in the US. "There's a huge goodwill factor. If the guy himself isn't Irish, his wife probably is. So he's saying to you: I've got 500 people here screaming at me, and I can't please them all. And you're saying: ah, c'mon, you gotta help me out. And it usually works. I genuinely believe being Irish is a big advantage. It has helped me dramatically, I can assure you."
Reliance on local knowledge doesn't always extend to jockeys. His insistence that Michael Kinane would pilot Vintage Crop in 1993 attracted scorn from some Australian commentators, who argued that a foreign horse could not navigate the Melbourne Cup without a local guide. Although events made the critics eat their words, the criticisms were renewed in 1994, when Vintage Crop could only finish seventh and Kinane was accused of taking the scenic route. But Weld rejects the charge still.
And while his 2002 winner had Australia's Damien Oliver ("when you do use local jockeys, you get the best") on board, this was no departure from policy. His other and initially favoured runner, Vinnie Roe (fourth eventually), was partnered by stable jockey Pat Smullen.
Despite strict adherence to the bottom line, Weld has a strong streak of patriotism. He thinks Irish horses and horse people are up there with the best, and has a fierce desire to prove it. Racing is not normally seen as a team sport. But a documentary on the trainer's life shown on RTÉ in March took the title Flying the Flag, and you know that this is part of Weld's motivation. It was apt when in 2002, the homecoming from Melbourne coincided with an Ireland-Australia rugby match in Lansdowne Road, where the trainer's son Mark paraded the cup at half time: the gold glinting in Ireland's November gloom. It was as if Weld had captained the Irish horse-racing industry to victory (the rugby team took the hint and won, too).
Among the books he's currently reading is the story of Michael Dwyer, the 1798 rebel. "An amazing guy. And of course he had strong links with Australia. He was sent there as a convict, although that's a debatable description. As far as I'm concerned, he went as a free man."
And some of his most treasured honours are Irish ones. In the meticulously clean house (you leave your shoes at the door), the only clutter is awards, trophies, and framed photographs of great occasions, from all over the world. But the ones he dwells on are a Charter Day medal from UCD, where he studied to be a vet, and a crystal bowl presented last year by Kildare County Council for his achievements on behalf of the county.
The trainer likes to joke that he sees his operation as an "Indian encampment". He can't compete against horse-racing's cavalries - the Ballydoyle and Goldolphin operations. So he chooses his battlegrounds carefully, and wages a hit-and-run campaign. But it's an elaborate Indian camp, all the same, with 112 stables and the 100 per cent occupancy rates that top hotels dream about.
The critical mass means that as well as the landmark overseas achievements - Weld was also the first European to win an American Triple Crown race, in 1990 - he's a dominant presence on the local scene, too. His conveyer belt of winners at the Galway Races is legendary, and first-time runners with the Weld label attract skinny odds from wary bookmakers.
As reigning Irish champion trainer, 2004 should see him pass the 3,000 winners mark, for a career begun in 1972. Now 56, he thanks God for his health, but typically, he doesn't leave it all up to God: "I work out in the gym four nights a week. I think it's important that I should be fit, as well as the horses."
There are gaps in his record - he has never won the Epsom Derby, for example. But then, thanks to the globalisation of the sport that he himself pioneered, the Epsom Derby is not what it once was. "It's an important race, but there are many important races. I just haven't had the horse to win it." Epsom aside, there are few worlds left to conquer, although he would like to win a race in Africa - South Africa to be exact. Unfortunately, the prevalence of equine diseases and the marathon post-race quarantines make it impossible for now. "We could get a horse there, all right, but it would be very hard to get him back."
In the meantime, if luck holds, he could be taking three runners to Melbourne in November: the two that did him proud in 2002, and his Australian addition. If he does, he could yet top the greatest thrill of his career to date - the moment when, 18 months ago, Vinnie Roe led Media Puzzle off the final bend at Flemington: "To have two horses turning for home in the Melbourne Cup, three lengths clear, and to know that one of them was going to win, because everything behind was under pressure ... that was a bit special."
The Boylesport Irish Guineas Festival, featuring the first two Classic races of the year in Ireland, takes place at The Curragh, Co Kildare on May 22nd-23rd