Jack Davison The vibes are good from the camp ahead of Black Magic Woman taking in the Group 3 Brownstown Stakes at Fairyhouse on Sunday. I think a course and distance winner is worth a few pounds and she’s just had a nice four-week break since her win at Fairyhouse the last day. We put her out for a week and then tuned her back up again, the break’s been good. It’s a big day, she does need to progress and step up but she’s given every indication that she has. I’m just really excited to be honest with you. While I know it’s a big day in terms of my career, it’s just great to be going there and having a crack at taking on the big boys, and doing it with a chance. That’s what’s exciting for me, so I’m just keeping my eye on the ball in the build-up to the race, but not getting too excited is a challenge as well! It’s my local track, I’m over there a couple of evenings a week. We were on the beach this morning in Mornington with her and a couple of other fillies, it’s a Meath thing as well. We’re ten minutes from the track, so it would just be huge to go there on Sunday and get a result. Of course, inside me, I’d love to do the business because she’s a good filly and that would be huge, but to get into the three, I’d take it. She’s been good this year but she still hasn’t got black type so I’d just like to get that monkey off my back. If Black Magic Woman can do it on Sunday, it’d be a huge help for me and my career, a big boost to what I’m doing. I’m fully licensed a year and a half but I didn’t jump in at the deep end and start with a big string. I started slowly but surely and have gradually assembled a nice bunch of horses. I’ve ten in now and they’re ten that are worth having in training. Bearing in mind that I’m training in Ireland and it’s really competitive, I’m just happy with what’s going on in the background in the yard, with the horses I’ve got together, and I feel that a lot’s going right in the yard, and in the background as a business. It’d be great if Black Magic Woman could solidify that on Sunday. Trying to get quality stock has been the main goal, to find those horses with black-type potential and getting them to achieve that — that’s a big part of my business model. The best year I spent, and certainly the toughest, was down with Mr. (Jim) Bolger. I’m very glad I did because at least once a day I stand in the yard and I’d be trying to figure something out and I just say, ‘what would the boss do?’ I always try and think a little bit along the lines of how he thinks. Seeing his work first hand gave me an idea of how I wanted to go about things. He’s not just a master of the training but also the breeding as well, so I’m trying to take a leaf out of Mr. Bolger’s book and try to follow the road he took. When it comes to getting the whole thing off the ground, it’s about getting some fillies, getting some form into them, to try to increase their value and then sell them on, or get them to a level where they’re worth breeding from. I try to look at the whole picture; the animal, the pedigree, try to think ‘at best, what can this horse be and how do I get it there?’ I follow stallions and pedigrees very closely and I’ll form my training programme around that a little bit. The likes of Fresnel, her family all stay very well and they progress from three to four, so with that in mind I’ve given her a little break since Ascot and now it’s just about ticking the black-type box and getting her there in good condition. Whatever she does this year, if she could get black type that would be great, but it’s just a stepping stone to progress next year. That’s my thought process when training any horse. The pedigree does come into it, and it does have a part to play. I’ve worked at all the sales, I’ve a lot of young stock, I’m really interested in how to breed a nice horse. I look at the stallions that are making it, does it put a bit of speed in a horse, does it put a bit of precocity in, do they need a bit of time or a bit of a trip? The breeding is always at the forefront of my mind when I’m looking at them going around the gallops. I’m just trying to mix and match the two, the breeding and the training, in a way that gets me to get a couple of results and kind of differentiate myself. Hopefully Black Magic Woman on Sunday can be the product of that line of thinking. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to be speaking to you in a year’s time and I’m training 100 horses. But the way I look at it is the owners I have and the horses I have, if I do a good job with them that’ll put me in a good position to get more. The opportunities and the owners are out there. I just try and do the best job I can with each horse. I train them on an individual basis, to try and get them all to reach their max. If that’s a cheap home-bred that can win an auction maiden, the likes of Glow Worm on Saturday (Navan, 2.30), we put her through the ring and she was unsold for a grand last year. She finished third, second, second, second in her first four starts and she could be favourite on Saturday. If she gets the job done, that’s a good pay day because she’s Plus 10 (receives a bonus if she wins). The point I’m making is that would be a fantastic result for her, and I’ve worked hard to try and get her to here and hopefully she’ll do the business tomorrow. Hopefully people will look into that, potential owners and the rest. The idea is to do the best I can with the small number of horses I have, I feel like I’m plenty busy with that amount of horses at the moment. If I can get it right with these few, then hopefully that’ll allow me to get more horses, get more staff and put in a system, as such, that will ultimately churn out more winners in the years to come and take it forward from there.
