There is a belief that the best National Hunt trainers are in Ireland but if, like me, you do not buy into that theory, the logical conclusion is that the current imbalance in the quality of horses on either side of the Irish Sea is down to sourcing; finding the best jumpers and, as importantly, having an owner with the wherewithal to pay for them.
Being on the doorstep has an obvious advantage for Irish trainers when it comes to Irish pointers, but it is also said that if a horse comes up for sale in France then Willie Mullins has already turned it down.
Whether that is the case or not, it appears the fightback has begun and is spearheaded by an ex-jockey who, but for a moment’s bad luck, would still be riding as understudy to Nico de Boinville at Seven Barrows.
However, if Jerry McGrath, the bloodstock agent responsible for sourcing Nicky Henderson’s short-priced Cheltenham Festival favourites Sir Gino and Lulamba from France and, far more importantly at the other end of the price spectrum, my daughter’s point-to-pointer Baunmore Jet, ever stops to reflect on the fall which stopped his career in its tracks four years ago, he might well come to believe that certain things happen for a reason.
The son of a dairy farmer from Cork, McGrath spent his youth showjumping and hunting – “standard procedure for an Irish jump jockey”, he points out – though without any great ambitions to be a jockey.
But, after a year at the Irish racing school, a stint with Dermot Weld, and a return to school, he found himself in Lambourn during his holidays as an amateur, eventually becoming a conditional jockey for Henderson and, in time, promoted to the stable’s No 2 jockey; loyal, reliable and a team player.
Invariably, he picked up some fat crumbs from the first jockey’s table and rode a couple of Cheltenham Festival winners, Une Artiste and Beware The Bear.
“I never thought I’d be a jockey so anything was a bonus,” he reflects. “My mother paid a £500 deposit to defer an educational course for a year in case it didn’t work out – my mother still reminds me of that £500!”
However, four years ago during a cold snap with no turf racing, he went to Lingfield for a full book of rides on an all-weather bumper card with not a jump to be taken. It should have been a normal day with one or even two additions to his tally of approximately 275 winners.
But three furlongs out his mount, Vegas Blue, clipped heels, went down and brought down two others. If you want to know why jump racing on the all-weather was stopped almost as soon as it had started, just ask McGrath.
He fractured and dislocated one shoulder and did the same to his opposite hip. Crutch-wise, that is not a terrific combination when it comes to the recovery but the pain, he recalls, was so bad every time they tried to straighten him up that eventually the Lingfield medical team “knocked me out”.
“The next thing I remember is waking up in Brighton Hospital with screws in my shoulder and something like a bicycle chain in my hip,” he says. “The worst thing was that it was during lockdown, so I wasn’t allowed any visitors. Being on your own in that situation is the worst.”
Two days after his arrival in a residential unit at the Injured Jockeys’ Fund’s Oaksey House in Lambourn, he contracted Covid and was isolated for another two weeks. After a year of trying to get back to race-riding, the towel was thrown in for him by the doctors.
‘I don’t dread visiting the accountant anymore’
“I never intended to ride until I was 40,” says McGrath, 34. “I thought it was going okay as a jockey, in the car every day, here and there, but I used to dread going to the accountant. I thought I was busy but he said it in black and white, how little I was earning and taking home. It’s a bit more fun seeing the accountant now, we smile a bit more!”
If you had asked him at the time what he would be doing now he would probably have reckoned at milking 250 cows at home, but even as a rider he had pinhooked – bought a horse to sell for a profit – a foal with the late Robert Chugg, had got a “massive taste for it” before he had retired and was not lacking in encouragement from Henderson.
“There’s something about a sales ring,” he says. “I get a massive buzz out of it and an even bigger buzz when it works out. I’ve been very lucky buying for good connections. It’s like riding a winner, the more success you have, the more success you want.”
The similarity with riding does not just stop there. “When you ride for an owner and trainer they put their trust in you and it is the same when you buy for them,” he adds. “We all hear about the good horses but, like giving a horse a bad ride, if you buy a slow one you analyse it and try not to do it again. And when I was riding I was unknowingly learning a lot about French horses, that they’re generally lighter-framed, more athletic.”
By way of reference to Mullins, he adds: “In all competition, someone’s going to be the biggest player and it’s up to someone else to take them on. There’s a big perception that you just go into the sales ring and stick your hand up but that’s the last step – before that you’ve got all the statistics, the stallion, their progeny, the pedigree, the conformation, the vetting – signing the docket is the last step in the process.”
Sir Gino, the Arkle favourite, is a real feather in his cap. Mullins bought the runner-up, Salvator Mundi (favourite for the Supreme), when Sir Gino won his maiden hurdle at Auteuil in 2023.
“Sir Gino’s sire, It’s Gino, hadn’t produced a real top horse, and he had a mixed Flattish pedigree and was trained by a Group One-winning Flat trainer who has only a few jumpers to trade, so you have to ask whether he was ready to run for his life on the day or whether it was natural talent,” McGrath points out. “The runner-up was by a more proven sire, No Risk At All, so was an easier sell to an owner. But you have to move quickly – Sir Gino was bought the day he won.
“We went back to find something last spring but while we found a lot, they had owners who weren’t traders and weren’t for sale so we regrouped and went back in the autumn to find Lulamba. Nicky gave him time but a lot of French horses have never seen a hill and it takes some a while to acclimatise to those sorts of things. He is by a first-season sire [Nirvana Du Berlais] who is not yet proven, so you have to factor all that into the price tag, and the danger is you start second-guessing yourself.”
But, working with France-based Toby Jones, and representing Goffs, McGrath is establishing networks into the most provincial corners of France, Ireland and Britain. Jango Baie, Jingko Blue and Holloway Queen could also represent him at the Festival in March. In a short space of time, the man who used to play second fiddle as a jockey is now leading the orchestra as a National Hunt bloodstock agent.
