Eoin McCarthy's 'absolutely phenomenal' Listowel Harvest Festival

Trainer Eoin McCarthy enjoyed a remarkable week at the Listowel Harvest Festival, saddling six winners over the seven days of the meeting.

With 11 winners so far this season, he's on track to break his personal record of 13 winners.

Editor Vincent Finegan on McCarthy's turnaround: "The extraordinary thing here is Eoin McCarthy.

“He took out a license in 2011, went six years without training a winner, and then he has six winners in the space of a week.

“I think he's had 11 winners so far this season, which is only two off his record, which was 13 a couple of years ago. He's going to smash that."

"The Modern Game is Rigged Against Small Trainers"

Journalist Johnny Ward added on the challenges facing smaller operations: "The problem for Eoin and so many trainers is that it's very very difficult in the modern game in the way national hunt racing has gone.

“It's kind of rigged really against small trainers who have point-to-points run in such that horses are trained to be impressive in a point-to-point, finish first or second, be sold for big money to a big owner or horses that come from France.

"The days of the likes of Brave Inca, Hardy Eustace and Harchibald - the horses that came with the old-fashioned roots in national hunt racing - that doesn't really happen that much anymore. So the likes of McCarthy has to deal with low-grade horses by and large and it's really, really difficult."

"Phenomenal" Results with Cost-Effective Training

He continued on McCarthy's achievement: "For a trainer to definitely target a festival like that with a fairly limited brand of horse in general - some nice horses but limited - and to come out with the results that he did was phenomenal. Absolutely phenomenal.

"Eoin told me his training fees the last time I asked him - very, very competitive. And as somebody who's involved in ownership on and off for a long time, that does matter.

"I really hope the likes of this week will promote to other owners particularly around that region because I think it's nice to have horses with a local trainer and Eoin very much is that.

“So he'll target the likes of Limerick at Christmas and Listowel at the harvest festival but to be winning that amount of races is phenomenal and fair play to him. He's a great fellow as well."