Garvan Donnelly

We're all enjoying the journey with Final Orders and obviously he's been a revelation over fences. I used to train him myself and we schooled him once over fences at my place. The young lad who rode him said he'd never ridden anything like him over a fence.

The CMD Syndicate is made up of people from Carlow, Meath and Dublin and they're having a ball with this horse. There are nine fellas and one woman and for some of them it's the first horse they've been involved in. My cousin Simon Donnelly is one of the members along with former jockey Glen Tormey, who used to ride very successfully for Philip Hobbs and Martin Pipe. Glen is a good friend of mine and runs the Oldtown House pub which is close to where I'm based in Garristown. We all headed back there on Saturday night after the horse won at the Dublin Racing Festival and celebrated in style. It was a late night!

Kevin Barron from Carlow, who's involved in the tool hire business, is another leading member of the syndicate. He worked in my yard for a while back in the day and it was Kevin who asked me to find a horse for the syndicate. When I saw him as a three-year-old at the sales in Newmarket, he had a lovely way of trotting and was very athletic but I just thought he looked weak and needed time. We didn't have the biggest of budgets but I managed to buy him for 14,000 guineas which looks cheap now for sure. He was a grand horse for me on the Flat and over hurdles but he's turned inside out since he's gone chasing.

Keith Donoghue gets on so well with him. He's always been a brilliant rider, particularly over a fence, and is riding with so much confidence this season. On Saturday he said he thought the horse was briefly feeling the pinch early in the back straight but then came alive again with him. The handicapper has given him another 9lb for that win and he's up to 149 now, not far off the horses who were placed in the Irish Arkle. At this stage it looks like we might let him take his chance in the Arkle at Cheltenham. You only get one chance to run in that and he can go for the Grand Annual next year! Aintree is a place that might suit him as well later in the spring. He's out in the paddock now, not a bother on him, and takes his races really well.

The syndicate are gearing up for Cheltenham, booking flights and accommodation and making plans. It's really exciting for them and he's the kind of horse that the public latches on to as well. This sort of horse is so hard to come by and it's probably even rarer nowadays when you see all the big owners with most of the good ones, but a horse like this gives a bit of hope to everyone.

I worked for a long time for Arthur Moore as head man and did a lot of the travelling with his horses as well. He had some great horses then, including the likes of Klairon Davis and Native Upmanship, and I thoroughly enjoyed my time there. I rode in bumpers for Arthur and had a few winners.

I then started training back at my home place in Garristown and we did reasonably well with a relatively small string. I had eight winners on the Flat in 2015 and had some good horses, including Plough Boy who was a real stalwart and won twelve races in all for me. It certainly was hard to give up training in my own name but you have to put things in perspective and it is so hard for the smaller yards to survive. That is the reality of it. I've known Gavin Cromwell for a long time and he offered me the position of assistant trainer. I've been with him almost a year now and am enjoying it. He's built up a great team of people around him and it's a yard that's a pleasure to work in. I suppose it is more financially secure for me and less stressful in that way.

The horses that moved with me to Gavin have done well. There's Final Orders, of course, but on the Flat both Dha Leath and Earls won four races last season. I'm still busy with my own yard at home and breed a few horses as well. When some of Gavin's horses need a bit of down-time, we look after them here. We've plenty of paddocks and we turn them out and keep an eye on them.

I'm in early at Gavin's to check on the horses in the morning and we bounce ideas off each other as to where they might run and what direction to go with them. I don't go racing all the time as there's plenty to be done in the yard but if some of the horses that I used to train are running, I generally go along to meet up with the owners. I'm definitely hoping to get to Cheltenham with the Final Orders crew and we're all really looking forward to the day out in March.