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My Racing Story

My Racing Story

Peter Fahey

Peter FaheyPeter Fahey
© Photo Healy Racing

It was no surprise when racing behind closed doors came to an end and the rest of the National Hunt season was cancelled. You were wondering if they might put it on at a later date but with the way things are at the moment I think they had to make the call.

We were very lucky that all our owners of the winter horses kept them with us and they were on the go until the announcement was made by Horse Racing Ireland last week. So we began roughing them off and they will just go on their summer holidays a bit earlier than normal.

Some of our National Hunt summer horses that are ready to go, we will just back off them until we see what is going on.

Every yard is keeping their flat summer horses ticking over, so they are ready to go when the racing comes back. But no one knows, that’s the problem. There is a bit of talk about mid-May. If that worked out it would be great for everyone. A month of flat racing before the jumpers start. It wouldn’t be the end of the world if we got going in the middle of May but a lot of people think we might be lucky to get going at the start of June.

It would be good if they looked at extending the flat season. It is short enough as it is, whereas the jumpers have a season all year round as such. It depends on the racetracks and what the ground is going to be like. If they are going to put on extra meetings it will depend on what tracks are able to hold the racing.

We are trying our best to keep all the staff on. We are lucky enough that we have summer horses for the flat as well as some summer jumpers. It is not as if we are all stopped during the summer, it would actually be our busiest time. Hopefully racing gets going again and everything gets back to normal. At the moment we are in a good enough situation. We are able to keep as much staff on as we can.

In terms of National Hunt, it is very hard for trainers outside of the top three or four. It is tricky but we have a lovely bunch of owners. They are all sticking by us. Even as the situation evolved, I got calls from some owners that were happy to help us out whatever way they could.

For myself I am lucky we have a good bunch of owners and great staff too. That is why you are trying your best to keep them on. They are very hard to come by and that is why we will try and keep as many of them as we can. We have 10 or 11 staff at the moment, and my wife Ber and I are working full-time as well.

So it’s a waiting game really. The atmosphere in the yard is unbelievably low at the moment. You have no targets. You are getting out of bed and doing the exact same thing. It is hard to keep motivated and going forward. You don’t know what you are aiming at. It is tricky. So it was good to get a little bit of clarity with the jumpers.

When the flat starts you have a month anyway, at least. If we get a couple of weeks’ notice when the flat is starting you have six weeks before you are talking about them jump racing. But hopefully everything settles down. It is a desperate situation.

Health is 100 per cent the most important thing. That is what it is all about for everybody. What the government is doing is dead right. The racing authorities will be guided by them and then we will get the guidelines for racing.

We are keeping Peregrine Run in training for another week or two to see if there is a programme published for the flat racing. He might have an opportunity if there are some of the staying flat maidens. He is a real summer horse as he loves the good ground and has been in great form. So if there are some staying flat races on good ground, he might go for them.

If there’s not, he will go off out for a few weeks and he will come back when we think there is racing going to be suitable for him. But he is very fit at the moment.

We have probably 10 or 15 horses for the flat. Then we have some young horses and we are getting them broken and getting going to keep the staff busy.

We do the most of our work at home. We do the fast bits on the Curragh. I don’t think there is anyone on the Curragh only the Curragh trainers though. We are able to keep everything ticking over at home anyway without having to go to the Curragh. But when racing starts back and the whole thing settles we can start back into the Curragh then.

Until then, we’ll keep as busy as we can but it is all about people remaining healthy and getting rid of coronavirus. And then hopefully we can get going again.

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