PROFILE
Eddie Lynam A 30-year journey to sprint supremacy
The Eddie Lynam story appears to be one of overnight success, but like all overnight success stories, it was 30 years in the making. His story illustrates how tough things really are for most trainers, while highlighting why it is that they persevere. Success hinges on the right horse coming along and, for Lynam, they’re now coming along in their droves. WORDS: LISSA OLIVER PHOTOS: CAROLINE NORRIS
“I
’VE held a licence since I was 20, so I’m self-taught and I’ve made loads of mistakes,” Lynam, now approaching 53, says candidly, but he has clearly learned from those early mistakes and last year dominated the sprint championships, winning no less than four Group Ones in that division. But even though Slade Power, who he bred himself, and Sole Power have catapulted him into the headlines recently, success goes back much further and Lynam isn’t just a whiz with sprinters. “Mum’s brothers were trainers and, despite Dad’s best efforts, I ended up being a trainer,” he explains. “To begin with, I worked for Jim Bolger and then I went to my uncle, Eamonn O’Connell. He only had a small string, but he did quite well.” It is obvious to anyone who has ever taken a stroll with Lynam around his stables, or stood with him at the races or sales, that he is more than just a horseman, but a ‘horse’s man’. They adore him as much as he adores them and it’s touching to see the rows of gentle muzzles extending over the stable doors, waiting to blow softly into the nose of their best friend. This must have been obvious even to Lynam’s father, whose “best efforts” were evidently shelved with the purchase of Sir Hugh Nugent’s stables, Lohunda Park. A training career was now nurtured in full and Lynam took out his licence at the beginning of 1984. “Lohunda Park was Jim Bolger’s old yard. It had big gallops and the leading miler of the 1960s, Red Slipper, was trained there,” Lynam recalls. “When Jim moved to Carlow I set up
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there. I only had four horses in training to begin with, it was very slow. In the late 1980s I started to do well, but then things dipped again. There was a massive recession early on. I’ve trained through two recessions, and they say they come in threes…” For Lynam, a recession is not as damaging as it might appear. “I pride myself in buying cheap horses,” he says and perhaps a key to his survival and ultimate success is in those bargain purchases and his “financial suicide” method of ownership. “I’ve never been great at getting owners and I’m still not,” he admits. “I could be put in a room with 100 would-be owners and still not come out with one. I’m an atypical kind of trainer, I have 60 horses in the yard and I own more than half of them. It’s financial suicide, but it’s the way I prefer to work. If I
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I pride myself in buying cheap horses. I’ve never been great at getting owners and I’m still not. I could be put in a room with 100 would-be owners and still not come out with one
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have a good horse, I don’t want to sell it. I’ve a big investment in the yard.” Which probably isn’t as good as it sounds. “In general, we run at a loss,” he says. This is true of most trainers, who only earn a living through trading. With Lynam’s disinclination to sell a promising animal, it’s easy to see why he’s running at a loss most seasons. But by hanging on to those promising animals, he has certainly made a name for himself in the good years. And that, he acknowledges, is the Catch-22 faced by all trainers initially. “Good horses are sparse and good owners few and far between,” he reflects. One wonders what sort of offers were refused for past stable favourite Duff, following a good juvenile win and places behind George Washington in the Group One National Stakes and Septimus in the Group Two Beresford Stakes. Duff was a key ingredient in Lynam’s success, but things might have been different had he transferred elsewhere at three, as is so often the case. “I started with four and it dripped on; eight, 12. My father and mother owned a lot of my horses, they were a big support to me. Tantum Ergo was my first big winner, in 1988 she won the Group Three C. L. Weld Park Stakes at the Phoenix Park. My first major winner was on Cartier Million day! The papers were full of the Cartier Million, there was no mention of the Park Stakes! Another later big winner was in 2004, when Red Feather won the Group Three International Stakes at the Curragh, but she had One Cool Cat behind her, so again all the papers could write about was the shock
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