The John Durkan Memorial Chase: Honoring a Racing Legend The Premiere Weekend at Punchestown will be headlined as always by the John Durkan Memorial Chase on Sunday afternoon as some of the best staying chasers in Ireland typically make their seasonal comebacks in this Grade 1 contest. The race is named in memory of renowned horseman John Durkan, a successful amateur rider and subsequently assistant trainer to both Oliver Sherwood and John Gosden before he was taken all too soon aged just 31 in January 1998 after being diagnosed with leukaemia. His death was mourned deeply in the racing community in both Ireland and Britain and he is remembered with the famous Punchestown Grade 1 each year. Family steeped in racing history John Durkan was born in 1967 and raised in Glencullen in south county Dublin, one of a family of nine. His father, Bill Durkan, was credited as the trainer of the remarkable mare Analogs Daughter, winner of the Arkle Challenge Trophy at the Cheltenham Festival in 1980. John enjoyed some good success as an amateur rider, with 93 winners under Rules, before becoming pupil assistant to Charlie Brooks, in Lambourn, Berkshire in 1986. Over the next decade, he learned his trade while serving as assistant trainer to Sherwood and, later, Gosden at his Clarehaven base, before seeking to go solo when he acquired the historic Green Lodge Stables in Newmarket. At the time, Sherwood said of his former assistant: "If he can't make it as a trainer, no one will." His untimely illness that would cut his life short meant Durkan never had the chance to fulfil his potential but, before that ill fate begot him, Durkan sourced one of the greatest two-mile hurdlers of all time. Uncovering the great Istabraq Durkan had ridden Istabraq at home before the four-year-old came up for sale. Bred and owned by Hamdan Al Maktoum, he was a three-parts brother to Secreto, winner of the 1984 Epsom Derby. He went into training with Gosden in Newmarket and Durkan spotted the potential for glory in a different setting. After consulting with McManus, he bought Istabraq for 38,000gns at Tattersalls Horses-in-Training sales in July 1996. The intention was that Istabraq would be trained by Durkan but his untimely illness prevented that. With his own training career in limbo as he battled ill-health, Durkan recommended Istabraq should join Aidan O'Brien, who was not long enshrined at Ballydoyle, and so it came to pass. McManus always maintained the horse was "on loan to Aidan", while O'Brien himself declared he was "minding him for John". Greatness comes to pass Istabraq starred as a hurdler but by late 1996, Durkan had moved to a specialist hospital in New York for treatment. He was home for Christmas, when he saw Istabraq cruise to victory in the 1st Choice Novice Hurdle at Leopardstown but by the time he won the Royal & SunAlliance Novices' Hurdle at Cheltenham in March 1997, Durkan could only listen in from a hospital bed. His condition deteriorated and he would pass away in January 1998, four days before Istabraq won the Irish Champion Hurdle at Leopardstown. A hat-trick of Champion Hurdles at Cheltenham followed from 1998-2000 — a feat no horse has matched since — before hopes of four-in-a-row were dashed in 2001 when the foot-and-mouth outbreak caused the Cheltenham Festival to be cancelled. McManus owes 'great debt' to Durkan When McManus bought Istabraq in the summer of 1996, Timmy Hyde, owner of Ireland's esteemed nursery, Camas Park Stud, was the man that signed the sales ticket. He was Durkan's father-in-law through his marriage to Hyde's daughter, Carol, and it was she that collected the trophy when Istabraq won the Irish Champion Hurdle in 1998. Charlie Swan, the man on board for Istabraq's glorious hurdling career, would years later marry and have a family with Carol Hyde. McManus, meanwhile, for all his success, would never forget the role played by John Durkan in his short lifetime. "But for John I would never have been fortunate enough to own Istabraq,” McManus told the Racing Post in 2008. "As a mark of the man, when he became ill and realised he was not going to be able to train the horse, he suggested we send Istabraq to Aidan. I owe him a sincere debt of gratitude and he is still sorely missed by all of us."
