Gavin Cromwell is a walking, talking rebuttal to those who insist Irish jump racing is some impervious closed shop for a tiny elite.
The 49-year-old trainer with the distinctive name is now part of the sport’s establishment. But how he got there undermines the stance of those who argue breaking in is all but impossible.
It is only a decade since Cromwell had a single horse to train. He wasn’t even really a trainer. Instead, he made his living as a farrier, shoeing horses for others to go and win with. They included Gordon Elliott, another ambitious Meath man in a hurry. Preparing his own tiny string was a sideline for Cromwell who began his racing life as a stable lad.
The rate of transformation in his fortunes has been remarkable. It is just eight years since Cromwell finished a head runner-up with the seemingly unprepossessing filly Jer’s Girl in one of Leopardstown’s St Stephen’s Day features. The winner was a certain Apple’s Jade. Within months, Jer’s Girl had been bought by JP McManus, won a couple of Grade Ones, and set her trainer on his way.
Getting the ‘start’ is often a problem for those peering in from the outside. Getting it, and making the most of it, is no corollary. But no one can accuse Cromwell of failure to snap up his opportunity. Be it on the flat or over jumps, here, in Britain, or further afield, his rise to prominence has been startlingly rapid.
There have been wins of the highest quality such as Espoir D’Allen in the 2019 Champion Hurdle. Flooring Porter’s back-back Stayers’ Hurdle victories could hardly have been a further counterpoint on the discipline spectrum to a pair of Royal Ascot wins for two-year-old sprinters. Apart, of course, from winning a Welsh Grand National with the 13-year-old Raz De Maree.
Such quality has been accompanied by quantity.
Within two years of finishing Ireland’s 2016-17 jumps season with just 10 winners, he had jumped to 62, worth prize money of almost €1 million in all. There have been ‘half-centuries’ every season since. This year has seen 18 domestic flat winners too, with Snellen, winner of Royal Ascot’s Chesham Stakes in June, a valid Classic prospect for 2024.
But going into the upcoming Christmas action, Cromwell is on course for a best jumps tally with 42 winners already in the bag. The resultant prize money puts him fourth in the trainers’ table.
Only the sport’s ‘old firm’ are ahead of him. Perennial champion Willie Mullins is chasing down Elliott in the table while Henry de Bromhead’s capacity for hitting the big-race bullseye always comes to the fore at Christmas too. But increasingly filling their rear mirrors is a lean figure who’s left obscurity in a hurry.
Cromwell could have up to 30 runners over the Christmas period. They include the mercurial Flooring Porter who is a prime contender for Grade One glory in Friday’s Neville Hotels Novice Chase at Leopardstown. Before that, My Mate Mozzie could try to deliver his trainer a first top-flight success over fences in the Racing Post Novice Chase on St Stephen’s Day.
Other prospects are littered through the busy holiday programme, including a likely Doncaster raid on Friday as well as a return to the happy hunting ground that is Cheltenham on New Year’s Day. Cromwell’s cross-channel strike rate this season has made him a feared visitor whenever he sends runners there.
However, it’s the capacity to compete at home with Irish racing’s ‘big three’ that underlines Cromwell’s progress in such a short space of time. He has 70 jump horses to run this winter. But a 150-box capacity at his yard just 36km from Dublin testifies to how he effectively he juggles the summer flat game too.
“It’s just the way things have unfolded but I’m not one bit sorry about that. I enjoy flat racing during the summer. We’ve had great days, a couple of Ascot winners, been to the Breeders’ Cup, had a winner at Longchamp, so, some great trips.
“But also, from a staff point of view, it’s so hard to get staff nowadays. It’s an all-year round business and this way we can keep staff on all year. If you were just National Hunt, if you let them go, there’s a huge risk you might not get them back,” Cromwell says.
That isn’t a concern for ‘super trainers’ who have generated unprecedented levels of success for horses trained in Ireland but whose dominance has prompted competition fears. Britain’s authorities recently floated the idea of restricting trainers to a certain number of runners in top cross-channel handicaps. It’s a less than subtle gesture across the Irish Sea towards Elliott and Mullins in particular.
The practical perils of taking them on at home, and the theoretical dangers of concentrating so much talent in so few hands, have been debated here for years. Plenty insist it is an all but futile exercise. Cromwell’s emergence suggests otherwise.
“It’s there for anybody to do, and you have to hand it to Gordon and Willie. Gordon started at the bottom as well. You can see how they have become superpowers, and it is very difficult for a smaller trainer to get going. But it doesn’t mean they can’t,” Cromwell argues.
Despite his success, and a fondness for mixing the codes, there is no shortage of ambition to take the fight to the big guns even more.
“My goal every year is to be better than we were last year, to try and train more winners, upgrade the quality of the horses, get to the big meetings, and try and win the big races. We’re conscious of trying to do that all the time. I don’t know where that will end up, but we’ll keep trying to go forward anyway. If you’re not growing, you’re dying,” he says.
“I don’t think racing in Ireland has ever been as strong. I was going to say healthy, and I think healthy is probably a good word. I know people are arguing about the superpowers and healthy mightn’t be the word in that conversation. But the quality of the horses in the country, and the quality of the people in every walk of the industry is very strong,” he adds.
It makes his rapid emergence in such a competitive environment even more noteworthy, although Cromwell commented: “You might think it’s happening quickly, but it doesn’t happen quickly enough for me. Back at the start, it was brilliant when you had a winner. It’s still brilliant. But I have to have winners now.”
One consequence is that ‘shoeing’ for a living is a thing of the past. A few years ago, he said he couldn’t see himself giving it up. That the farrier business is now in other hands underlines how quickly things can change.
“A couple of different lads that served their time with me took it over. One of them, the last apprentice that served his time with me, does all my farrier work here,” he says. “So, if he does it wrong, it’s my fault!”
That’s the deal with most things when having one of the most powerful yards in the country.
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