When Jim Bolger tells you he's never been to the Epsom Derby with a better-prepared horse... it's time to sit up and take notice.
Bolger saddles Moonlight Magic in the Epsom Derby at 4.3o on Saturday afternoon and he knows what he's talking about. He won the race in 2008 with New Approach - one of the best winners of the past generation. He probably would have won it in 2006 with the brilliant Teofilo too but he got injured after an unbeaten two-year-old campaign and never even made it to Epsom.
Bolger's achievements speak for themselves - he has trained 51 Group 1 winners and at 75 years of age, he's forgotten more about racing than most of us are ever likely to learn. In a racing world filled with spivs and con-artists - he stands as a man apart. He's a lifelong Pioneer, never smoked and is as straight a shooter as there could be.
The legendary jumps jockey AP McCoy was an apprentice jockey at Bolger's Coolcullen yard as a teenager. McCoy fell off a horse and broke his femur and was screaming in pain when Bolger came across him and told him to quit his whingeing and that he was too bloody soft to make it as a jockey.
Bolger is not a man in the habit of calling a spade an excavational implement but, even so, his excitement about Moonlight Magic is palpable.
Speaking exclusively to Balls.ie, he said,
"I haven't ever had a horse that I was this happy going over to Epsom. New Approach, as you know, was surrounded in controversy. He had less than two weeks to prepare for Epsom. But for this fellow, everything has worked out well that we have tried. I couldn't be happier with him and I wouldn't be a bit surprised if he does win it.
"The Derby has been the plan since day one. We all know the Derby is the first Saturday in June and that's the plan for anyone with notions of winning. It's a bit like a hurling manager aiming at the first Sunday in September."
The horse is currently trading at odds of 12/1, which simply means that the bookmakers predict that if the race was run 12 times - Moonlight Magic would win once. Bolger, who trained as an accountant before he took up training, scoffs at this notion.
"I don't know about that. Betting markets are a reflection of the weight of money the public place on a horse. It doesn't actually reflect the chance of the horse. I certainly think that if the race was run 12 times, we'd come on out on top at least six times."
Moonlight Magic sealed his place for the Derby with a decisive win in the Derrinstown Stud Derby Trial at Leopardstown at the start of May. Although Bolger's faith in the horse never wavered - he did go into that race with questions to answer after suffering the only defeat of his four-race career in his previous race - going down to Dermot Weld's Harzard - who will also line up at Epsom.
"The first time at Leopardstown and he wasn't quite right. He was very quiet in himself afterwards so I really only had two weeks to prepare him for the Derrinstown and I was hoping he would run well but he managed to win it well. He has come on a lot since then. We have had a dream run with him.He wasn't really ready for that race but he managed to win it. That was a great sign. He really is a classy horse."
Despite his wealth of knowledge, Bolger won't be burdening his stable jockey and son-in-law Kevin Manning (pictured with Bolger below) with too many instructions in the paddock before the race. Once you earn Bolger's trust, it stays earned and he knows Manning can get the job done as he did in 2008.
"I leave it to Kevin because he has been around there before, he knows the horse very well and he will have summed up the opposition better than I would. Whatever decision he makes, I'll be happy enough with that. He is very good. He is an old head on middle-aged shoulders."
All the talk before the Derby on Saturday will centre around the same question - will the horse stay? It's a question that can be asked about pretty much every horse in the race. They are all three-year-old colts and none of them have much in the way of form when it comes to the distance - you want to ease them up to it gently.
Bolger has less doubts than most when it comes to this. In 2010, he teamed up with leading geneticist Dr. Emmeline Hill to found Equinome - a company which has developed a genetic test to find out a horse's optimum distance. The company is massively successful. Bolger had made his name as a trainer decades before that but he wasn't a man to rely on tradition to maintain his advantage.
"I believe [Equinome] gives me an edge and I'd be foolish to turn it down. It got off to a great start and I think it was profitable after 18 months or so. But the concept was great and Emmeline Hill is a very bright spark and she's been doing that research for years. She wasn't just an overnight success, she'd been working at it for nearly 20 years."
Without getting too technical, the Equinome test has strongly indicated that Moonlight Magic will take to the mile and a half trip like a duck to water.
"He is what is called a CT-type horse and that means he has a great chance of staying a mile and a half. The test is great and if I'm presented with an edge I'm going to take it."
Sums up Bolger's career in a nutshell really.
