Gilligan in dreamland

John McIntyre

HE had never taken a horse to the Cheltenham National Hunt Festival before; he only took one horse to the Cotswolds last week; he didn’t think any of the yard’s other inmates would be competitive enough; but he knew his horse was no 33/1 outsider.

In becoming the first Galway-based trainer to ever saddle a winner at the Olympics of National Hunt racing, Paul Gilligan had added to a burgeoning reputation in the sport and is now already firmly established as the top handler in the West of Ireland.

It’s only the Galway summer festival of 2007 that the 36-year-old first really came to racing prominence when saddling three winners, Tai Lass, Jadanli and Nintytwo Team, which landed the featured Freshways Handicap Hurdle on the penultimate day of the meeting.Gilligan has maintained a reasonable strike-rate with his string in the interim with the Sligo track a particularly happy hunting ground.

Renowned as a hard worker in the business and someone who doesn’t suffer fools gladly, he is now moving to a different level with the obvious potential to expand his operation.

The horse which embellished Gilligan’s reputation in the sport at Cheltenham last Friday was Berties Dream in the three-mile Albert Bartlett Novices Hurdle. Significantly, it wasn’t the seven-year-old’s first visit to Prestbury Park as the previous November he had finished an honourable third to Tell Massini over three furlongs shorter.

Tony McCoy was on board that day and reckoned that Berties Dream would benefit from a step up in trip. He was only beaten about nine lengths that day, giving the winner seven lbs, and Tell Massini would end up 100/30 favourite last Friday. He was already tailing off when pulled up before the last.

Having finished an encouraging fourth behind War Of Attrition in his festival prep run at Navan in mid-February, Berties Dream was still largely ignored in the ante post betting. Afer all, what are the odds of a West of Ireland trainer saddling a Cheltenham festival winner with his first ever runner?

Sent off a largely unconsidered 33/1 chance, Berties Dream was always in touch and though coming under pressure approaching the second last where he was less than fluent, Andrew Lynch’s mount began to stay on powerfully up the hill on the rain-softened ground.Drawing alongside the tiring Restless Harry, which soon came to grief, and Najaf, at the last, Berties Dream was clearly relishing the three-mile trip and there was no doubting his superiority in powering away for an emphatic six lengths win in the £100,000 novices contest for the Dublin-based Half A Keg Syndicate.

It represented a masterful training performance by Gilligan, who was saddling his fifth cross-channel winner of the campaign. He was naturally thrilled by the biggest success of his career in the unsaddling enclosure afterwards. “Money can’t but this feeling, I cannot believe it.”

For more, read this week's Galway City Tribune.