Eoin Griffin

I'm from south Kilkenny, just outside Waterford. I live right on the border of Kilkenny, Waterford and Wexford. Like any border, there's always plenty of fun down here especially when it comes to GAA! I'm a Kilkenny man, but I class Waterford as my home town.

My first connection to horses was as a child going racing with my father and my aunt. There would be the odd sicknote when there was a local meeting on in Gowran Park, Clonmel or Tramore!

That was my first introduction to racing. I don't come from a racing background so to speak, my family weren't involved in it. Growing up, I never envisaged any route into working in racing. It just seemed something far away and didn't seem like it was an option.

I suppose there was a lightbulb moment - I remember seeing Jim Bolger getting interviewed by Gay Byrne on The Late Late Show around the time of St Jovite (Irish Derby winner 1992) and Jet Ski Lady (Epsom Oaks winner 1991). Jim described his route into racing in that interview. I was still a teenager, but something just clicked in my head. It was still far away, though.

I went down a different road. I served my time as a maintenance fitter in a brewery in Waterford - I worked for Guinness for almost 20 years and really enjoyed my time in there, a great company to work for.

In the mid-nineties, my father had a mare that he had in training. She retired due to injury and he started breeding from her. Her first offspring were coming along and we also had a couple of store horses around the place. I decided to give it a go myself and took out a permit to train. The permit meant you were allowed to train family-owned horses, so that's where I started.

I had no facilities and lived in the village of Slieverue. I had three stables out the back of the house and rode the horses myself. I used to go down the road to a neighbour to exercise the horses on his land. It was between there and going to the beach in Woodstown. Basically, I made loads of mistakes on my own horses and learned plenty of hard lessons.

Hobby turned career

I still never envisaged it as a career. It was a pastime, a hobby. I still had my job. I had finished my apprenticeship and had qualified and was working shifts which suited. I was off in the mornings or the afternoons.

In the late nineties, I had two accidents in a short space of time and was no longer able to carry out my duties, so needed a career change. I just decided that I would give training a go. The previous few years I had also started riding out on weekends and any time off I had was spent up at Joe Crowley's on The Hill.

I was building up my experience, and always had my eyes and ears open. I was on the first trainer's course that the Turf Club ran along with Gerry Keane and Philip Rothwell. There were 12 on it and I think the three of us are the only ones that are still training.

We purchased Beacon Hill as a greenfield site around 1996. It wasn't a straightforward process getting planning permission, it took approximately two and a-half years to get it. Started off with six stables here and gradually built it up over the next few years. I took out a public licence in 2000, but I didn't really go at it full-time until about 2002. I was still kind of operating with my own horses really.

Rua Lass won three bumpers (in 1999 and 2000) and a valuable handicap hurdle at the Galway Festival. Then her sister, Orthez, won a couple of hurdle races and won the mares' final which was a Listed chase at the time in Limerick (2002). That got me a little bit of attention and we built from there. Those years between 2004 to 2008/2009, my career was on a fairly steep upward trajectory.

Plenty of graded winners and big-handicap winners and all of that. At times I had to pinch myself. Things were going very well until the recession hit in 2008. I knew I was in trouble as we had just done a big expansion here and finished it in September 2008. We built a swimming pool, and purchased additional land and built a second gallop. It was a big investment in the facility.

Recession hit us hard

Those were the years that Kazal (seven-time winner including in a Grade 2 hurdle at Navan in 2008) was in his prime. He had brought us to a new level really. A lot of my client base were in the construction industry, so the recession had a huge knock-on effect. Everyone was badly affected by it and we were put on the back foot straight away.

The next few years weren't easy and we were starting to get back on our feet around 2013, and then we had a major construction project right at the back of our stables and around my gallop that went on for two years. That had a devastating effect on the form of the horses. It was a big distraction and a lot of noise. You think at the time you are working through it with procedures in place to try and minimise the effect of it but, really and truly, it had a devastating effect.

We were only starting to get back on our feet after the recession. Over the next few years, things were very poor. When Covid-19 hit, it was a little bit of a reset. I'd say mentally more than anything else as it gave me time to look at things. Since then, things have been picking up very slowly. There were some green shoots, nothing major. Just things started to pick up a little bit in terms of getting winners on a consistent basis.

Reasons to remain positive

The maximum number of horses I've every trained here is 30 and at the moment we have 25 in. Looking back over the lean years, you still remain positive and you're looking to build on things. You're training horses in the morning and the afternoon, and you're looking for new stock and trying to attract in new owners. We all know it is very much a performance-driven sport like any professional sport and, once the winners stop coming, you can slip back very quickly.

I do really appreciate any success now. I enjoy things a little bit more now. Back then when everything was on an upward curve, it passed me by in a bit of a blur. I was very focused on progressing my career, so it was all about the next day and I didn't really savour the moment. I suppose you still have the fire burning in the belly. I don't lack ambition, I still want to be mixing it.

The industry has really changed in the intervening years. Back when I started out training, somebody training 100 horses was a big yard. Now there are 300 horses and upwards under their control from pre-trainers etc.

We can only try and get the best out of what we have and try to progress at a rate that I think is achievable. My target at the moment is get up to those trainers that have kind of 40/50/60 horses. I'd like to get up to those figures and have runners and winners on a more consistent basis.

When your numbers are down low, it tends to come in fits and starts. We do have periods where we wouldn't have a lot of runners. My goal at the moment is to try and build the numbers here back up so we can be more competitive on a consistent basis.

We all want to be training good horses but, to be honest about it, I get as much kick out of winning a 0-100 as some of the bigger ones, sometimes even more so. We had a horse that won at Fairyhouse last November, Good World, and I think he has won five races for us. He's only a small, little, handy horse. Every time he goes above 100, he is not competitive. Sometimes getting those horses with limited ability to win is as much an achievement.

Cheltenham entries for Ol Man Dingle

My main horse Ol Man Dingle is a horse that likes nice ground, he likes decent ground. He'll get a couple of entries at Cheltenham.

He's already in the Brown Advisory although I think a more realistic target for him will probably be the Jack Richards Novices Handicap Chase. We took the chance on Drinmore day in Fairyhouse (5th in Grade 1 at Fairyhouse in November) because I probably didn't think the ground was as bad as what it was. Also, when we do step him up in trip on his ground I think you are going to see further improvement.

He was very impressive on both days that he won at Galway (last October) and especially in Cork (Grade 3 novice chase in November). That was a very eye-catching win in Cork. I think if you want to look at what the horse's potential is over fences, I think you just need to look at that race. Hopefully, we are going to get his ground at some of the spring festivals and hopefully we will get our day with him.

I really enjoy working in the Irish racing industry. If I didn't enjoy it, I don't think I would have been able to have kept going over the last 10 years or so. When I look back on it, sometimes I wonder how I did keep going, but I think trainers are an especially resilient bunch from the bottom to the top.

Over those years that things were a bit quiet here, I got a little bit more involved in other aspects of the industry - on the board of the IRTA (Irish Racehorse Trainers Association) and more recently I was on the pension management group as well.

I really enjoy the day-to-day preparation of the horses, working with the staff here, bringing the horses along. It is all about the winners and the winners on the big day. Hopefully, there will be a few days ahead of us over the coming years.

Eoin was in conversation with Michael Graham.

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About Michael Graham

Michael has worked in horse racing journalism for more than 15 years, having also written a weekly betting column on Gaelic football and hurling for a newspaper. He is involved in writing the My Racing Story features on this website. He spent a year in South Africa completing a Diploma in Business Administration and also studied Newspaper Journalism in Belfast. He enjoys playing 5-a-side football on a regular basis.

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