Brian McMahon I'm a proud Clare man but my yard is just across the border near Tubber in Co Galway. My family is steeped in hurling and I won a minor All-Ireland with Clare and a county championship with our club Kilmaley. I'm a qualified biochemist and have been combining working at that, and training, over the last number of years but now I’m full-time at the training. I got a call from my boss in January and he said “this working from home doesn’t suit everyone, I want you back in the office”. I said to him “it suits me just fine” but he wasn’t for changing, so that was it for me and I decided I wanted to give training a real rattle. We’re up in numbers at the yard and have been getting good support from plenty of people. At the moment it’s just myself and a girl called Esther Wright who spent many years in Jackdaws Castle with ‘Duke’ Nicholson, Alan King and Jonjo O’Neill. She’s a godsend and is in six mornings a week and, between the pair of us, we ride out seven or eight lots a day. I hope to get another person in part-time to share the workload. This year has been about trying to work out how to deal with a bigger number of horses which I think just gives you a better chance of getting your hands on some good ones. It’s a calculated gamble but I deliberately didn’t do the sums on what it might all cost because you’d never take the risk if you did that. This is the life I want. I know it’s all-consuming but when I had the two jobs, I felt it was impossible to do either of them quite as I wanted. There is some anxiety when you don’t have that steady wage coming in but I don’t regret the decision at all. Last season my stats were quite respectable, seven winners from eighty-odd runners, but it’s all about trying to get your hands on the good ones and hopefully getting a chance to go to the big meetings. I had a couple of years with Nicky Henderson during the Sprinter Scare era and got a taste of Cheltenham then as I did a few years later with my own horse Powersbomb who ran well at the festival. Having a horse over there for the week of the festival and riding him out in the morning and the whole buzz around the place both before and during racing, that’s where I’d love to be again. I do a bit of coaching with a hurling team but I suppose I’m missing that direct involvement that I had as a player and the excitement of the big days. Being involved hands-on with a horse during Cheltenham week is comparable and that is what we’re in the game for. Obviously if I got a nice horse you’d have to consider offers as well just to survive and keep the business going, but I’d love to be going back to Cheltenham with a contender some day. The aim is to, even fleetingly, dine at the top table with a nice horse. I’m in a sort of mini-Lambourn where I’m based with the likes of Derek O’Connor and his brother Pauric’s yards nearby, also John Staunton whose point-to-pointers have been very successful in the last couple of years. Eoin Mahon and Diarmuid Moloney come in to school for me and are a great help. Everyone in the locality is very helpful and they all wish you well, that’s what they’d tell you to your face anyway! There’s a social aspect too about having other horse people around and we’d often meet up in the Burren Inn in Tubber or Whelan’s in Shanaglish after one of the local point-to-points and have a bit of craic. It’s a good way of making contacts and getting to know people who might fancy having a horse with you. My latest winner was The Eye Of Tulla at Ballinrobe a couple of weeks ago and hopefully things will continue to build and the bigger numbers will result in us getting a few nice horses to go to war with. I’m under no illusions about how competitive the game is but I’m up for the challenge. I always was when I was on the hurling pitch and I'm no different now. Brian McMahon was in conversation with Mark Nunan. About Mark Nunan Mark has followed racing since he was a teenager and worked for many years as a broadcaster with the Irish version of Racecall. He joined the Press Association in 2019 and is also a contributor to the Racing Post. A native of Kildare, he now lives in Sligo. View Latest Articles by Mark Nunan
