Sandra Hughes

I was born and bred on the Curragh and my dad was Dessie Hughes the horse trainer. When I was younger, I got married and moved away to England, had children and returned home about 17 years ago. I came home with the three children and started working with my dad straight away. In the early days, I took a prominent role in the office on the business side of things. Then as the years went on, I would have taken more of a role in supporting him and going to race meetings and sales he couldn't get to.

Unfortunately, in 2013 my dad was diagnosed with cancer and he passed away in November 2014. We knew how ill he was, but it comes as a huge shock when you know you are going to lose somebody. His last meeting was actually the Galway meeting in September and he trained a winner that day, Sheamus won the bumper. From September to November, he was in and out of hospital and I was up and down to him every day in the hospital with the entries and the declaration sheets, and giving him the updates on how everything was progressing. We were very lucky as we had a fantastic team behind us in Osborne Lodge. When dad wasn't there, everybody knew their job and we had a plan for each horse.

When my dad passed away, I was in charge then. There wasn't really an option to shut everything down as we had a yard of horses. There were entries made and responsibilities to our owners so, between myself and my mum and my brother Richard, we made the decision that I would carry on. We had about two weeks when there were loads of horses running and we hadn't had a winner and I know it was only a very short time, but I felt I was under a huge amount of pressure. I had all these really good horses in the yard, especially for Gigginstown and they needed results. At the Fairyhouse meeting on the Saturday (29th November 2014), Sub Lieutenant won his maiden hurdle. That was a big boost to get the first winner and then on the Sunday Lieutenant Colonel won the Grade 1 Hatton's Grace. We weren't surprised that he won because it was a plan dad would have had for him anyway. It was hugely exciting and everything just went right that year. Then he went on to win the Christmas Hurdle (at Leopardstown). Then we had a few Graded winners in January and February.

Come the Irish Grand National (at Fairyhouse in April 2015) and Thunder And Roses went and did it for us. That was absolutely wonderful. Again, it was very satisfying for me because I remember when Thunder And Roses came back in from his holidays, he went into his normal stable in the front yard, and I was with my dad and he turned around to me and he said 'He's our Irish National winner next year, Sandra'. To be able to do that for him was very important for me just to finish off what he wanted to do. He won it before with Timbera (in 2003) and was probably unlucky a few times as well with other horses. It was a race he really loved.

We carried on for the guts of three seasons. Everything was ticking along nicely, but then a lot of our older owners decided that with dad not here, they wouldn't invest again. They had sort of come to the end of their racing journeys, so I suppose I wouldn't have had the firepower to go to the sales and buy new horses. I finished up at Down Royal in May 2017 as it wasn't financially viable. Having 75/80 horses the business model worked, but I had dropped down to 50 horses and, with what I was charging my owners, it wasn't viable anymore. I needed 75 horses to break even. I was very aware that season when I started off that things were coming to an end. You are always hoping that something would turn around but I wasn't going to get 25 new owners. I hadn't got the money behind me to go and buy 25 horses on spec and try and sell them. I was able to walk away without owing any money and nobody owed me any money. All the lads got their redundancy and it was done in the right way and that was more important to me.

I reflect on it (training) by saying I wish I knew then what I know now. I was very aware from day one when I took out the licence that I had massive shoes to fill and I was never going to fill them. I would have always had that fear that I wasn't good enough. I suppose after the first year my confidence grew and I had great support from my owners - one owner in particular, Lar Byrne, and he allowed me to go to France and buy Acapella Bourgeois who was hugely successful. It gave me a fabulous boost that he believed in me. I was really looking forward to the future and I had a lot of plans. Things were going really well and then I lost a major owner (Gigginstown) and lost 12 horses - six the first year and six the second year - and that knocked my confidence a lot. I can't say my heart wasn't in it because it was. That feeling of not being good enough started to creep in and when you start thinking like that as a trainer, you can't, as you have to be positive all the time during the good times and the bad times and you have to believe in yourself and what you are doing. When I look back now and see what I did, I was actually doing it and I had a fantastic team around me. I just wish I had a little bit more confidence in myself and spoke up a little bit more for myself and what I believed in.

I did dip into a few roles since training. I did some racecourse work - I worked a little bit with the Curragh and Roscommon racecourses really as a person to look after owners and sponsors on the day. I did a little bit of work then with HRI and their pensions, but these were only short little contracts that I had. I naively thought when I gave up training that I would get a really good job and still be involved in racing, and everything would be fine. Actually, that wasn't the case. I don't know whether it was to do with my lack of further education, I don't have a degree in anything. Maybe it was my age, but I did find it really difficult to get the job I felt I could have done.

It was an absolute privilege to be the ambassador for the Irish Godolphin Stud & Stable Staff Awards (in 2018) and it is something that I continue to do every year. It is an honour to do it. I was so lucky when I was training, I had the most wonderful staff and I do believe more should be done for our stable staff in this country, so to help with the awards is a privilege for me.

Two years ago, I was approached by a very good friend of mine called Dr Ken Hill. Ken would have worked an awful lot with my dad to do with the health and bloods of horses down through the years. He would have worked closely with Freedom Health, the company that makes Succeed Equine. He asked me if I would be interested in coming on board as a consultant for the first six months and see how I liked the job and how I liked the role. I really enjoyed it and they are a pleasure to work for. Then they offered me a full-time position as the regional manager for Ireland for Success Equine. I don't sell Succeed, I promote it. I travel around the country to studs and to yards offering people trials of Succeed. I have learned so much about the horse in my latest role with a lot of educational Zoom calls to our team in America. It is a product that I know because my dad used it for years. I was very familiar with what it did and how it worked, but once I started working for them, I understood the science behind it. Horses' digestive systems have never evolved to what we expect them to do. We take them out of the field, put them in stables, we give them hard feed, we train them, we put them under stress, we travel them to the races and some of them are not actually able to cope with it. Succeed is designed to help their digestive systems through all of that. I am really lucky that I found something that suits me and I feel valued in the job I am doing and I think that is very important. I welcome anybody out there who wants some advice on Succeed getting in touch with me.

My son David (Egan, jockey) made waves in Japan recently. He has had a wonderful time and a treble on his first day there. He really enjoyed the experience. To win a Classic (on Eldar Eldarov at Doncaster in St Leger last year) so early in his career just blew us away. We had followed Richard riding for years and it took him a long time before he won his first Classic, so for David to win at such an early age was absolutely fantastic. I'm very proud of him because he is so focused and dedicated and he works so hard. He has an awful lot of my dad's traits which is lovely to see. It is a little bit bittersweet because my dad never got to see him riding, he would have loved that.