Resolute Bob getting the job done

John McIntyre is a member of the five-man Galway based Gaticoma Syndicate which has seen its red and black colours carried to victory by Rigour Back Bob on six occasions last season. He offers an unique insight into part-owning a horse which has been a model of consistency and is as tough as they come.

IT was 7am on Monday, May 3. After barely three hours sleep in the wake of Galway hurlers National League triumph over Cork in Thurles the previous evening, their team manager was driving around the streets of Galway city in vain pursuit of the Racing Post.

The fact that it was a Bank Holiday Monday hardly helped my quest for horse racing’s bible, but I was couldn’t wait to find out the experts’ view of Rigour Back Bob’s chances in the McConville Construction Hurdle at Down Royal later in the afternoon.

Already our pride and joy had done his owners, the Gaticoma Syndicate, proud over a roller-coaster 12 months which left him chasing a sixth win from 11 runs at Northern Ireland’s premier racetrack. He had first gotten off the mark in a bumper at Ballinrobe the previous May.

Bob was supposed to be ‘going out to grass’ after his Grade 3 success at the Punchestown festival less than a fortnight earlier, but trainer Edward O’Grady made contact a few days before the league final to inform the syndicate that the horse was in “rude health” and the race in Down Royal was tailor-made for him.

O’Grady, who has the best strike rate of any modern-day Irish trainer at the Cheltenham festival, has been the key component in not alone Bob’s progress but in the syndicate ending up with the horse in the first place. He bought him at the Goffs Land Rover Sales before completing a deal with the five racing renegades from the West.

My partners in crime are Michael Needham, Willie Donohue, Jim Gallagher and Johnny Carroll, four basically retired individuals who, like me, can hardly believe our good fortune in coming across such a consistent and quality horse which is as genuine as the day is long.O’Grady hadn’t beaten around the bush in outlining the trials and tribulations of owning a racehorse, but a couple of us didn’t need much marking of our cards about those pitfalls. We knew getting the horse to the racetrack wasn’t guaranteed never mind that he might be even competitive.

It’s fair to say, however, O’Grady liked the chestnut (out of Rigorous and Bob Back) from the start, but none of us were prepared for him finishing a close up fourth behind Universal Truth on his debut appearance in a Leopardstown bumper last March 12 months. Galway were playing Cork in the league that same day and it’s the only time I have missed Bob running . . . getting the team bus to pull outside a bookies’ office in Cork so I could see the race was a bit of a surreal moment.

On the strength of that effort, Bob was one of the leading fancies for the Goffs Land Rover Bumper at the Punchestown festival and despite meeting trouble in running, he finished a gallant third before rounding off his first campaign in great style at Ballinrobe. That was some day and the syndicate celebrated as though we had won the Cheltenham Gold Cup and Epsom Derby all rolled into one.

For more, read this week's Connacht Tribune Galway Races Supplement