Cheltenham the final destination as bold moves pay off for Limerick racing double act

It was half two in the morning when Davy Mann left Rathkeale in west Limerick to catch a red-eye flight from Dublin to Bristol. The New Year’s Eve crowds had dispersed from the hotel he owns in the middle of the town. His horse was running at lunchtime. In Cheltenham. Sleep? Some other time.

He arrived too early to use his hotel room near the track, so he brought his race day wardrobe into the toilets. He emerged in red pinstripe trousers, red bow-tie, red puffer jacket and white shirt, like a stunning transformation from a Gok Wan makeover. The daring rig-out mirrored the silks of his horse. His flamboyance made it sing.

In the big novice chase, The Real Whacker was the outsider of five. Alex Ferguson owned the favourite, trained by Paul Nicholls. Mann watched the race on the big screen in the parade ring, rooted to the spot, afraid to utter a sound until The Real Whacker flew the last; Ferguson’s horse was five lengths behind by then, gasping.

“Monmiral and Thunder Rock won’t lay a glove on him,” roared the racecourse commentator.

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Mann led the horse into the winner’s enclosure, with the trainer Paddy Neville holding the other side of the reins. They grew up as neighbours outside the small Limerick village of Ballysteen. They played Gaelic football and soccer together, and their friendship was one of those enduring things that neither of them had to think about.

You’re in the wrong side of the country, down south. There don’t seem to be too many owners down there. I suppose the money isn’t there

The first time Neville went to the races, Mann took him. They were chatting the other night, trying to remember when it was: 36 years ago, they reckoned. “Davy was a few years older than us, and he always had a good car,” says Neville. “He was great to us when we were kids. He brought us everywhere.”

Neville has made a life from horses, first as a point-to-point jockey, then as a trainer. He had no desire to do anything else, which was the only thing that made it bearable sometimes. For small fish, Irish racing is a shark pool. In the last 10 seasons, before he left Ireland, Neville had trained just 20 winners; in a couple of those seasons, he had drawn a blank.

There came a point when he knew he couldn’t keep doing the same thing. On an exploratory mission, he brought horses over and back to England, taking the ferry from Belfast to Cairnryan in Scotland, and then south from there. He had access to stables in the north of England, where he could base his raiding party for a few days. But it was a 19-hour journey, and after a while the cost and the travelling took their toll.

Neville was nearly 50 years of age when he decided to leave home. For young Irish jockeys, in search of opportunities, it has been a familiar crossing for generations, but not for a middle-aged trainer. As soon as Neville started making trips to England, though, he started to have winners again; the mad thing to do was the only thing that made sense. He mustered the courage to jump.

“It was just tough going [at home],” he says. “Tough going. It would dishearten you. I started off good in the early days. The building crash affected us big time. You’re in the wrong side of the country as well, down south. There doesn’t seem to be too many owners down there. I suppose the money isn’t there. They all want to be owners, but they don’t want to pay. There’s a saying: ‘We’ll pay you when he wins a race.’ We’ve heard that a lot.

“Then you had the ballot system in Ireland. I think I was nine weeks trying to get a horse into a handicap hurdle. Jesus, how can you train a horse for nine weeks without getting a run? The few owners that I had – which I didn’t have too many – they’d be chirping about it, as if it was my fault that the horse didn’t get in.”

One day, in the middle of all this, Mann took a call from Neville. Catching up. “He was all talk, and I said to him, ‘What’s up with you?’” says Mann. “He says, ‘I’m over in England.’ ‘You’re over in England, are you? ‘I’m after taking a few stables from Ann Duffield. I’m trying to get a training licence over here and everything.’

“I said: ‘Where’s my horse?’ ‘He’s over here, with me.’ I said: ‘Yeah – thanks for telling me.’ Then he says: ‘Davy, I know you too well. You love travelling. This will be good for you.’ [laughs]. And I said: ‘You know what, it’s true for you.’”

At the start, I regretted coming home from Boston for a good few years, especially when business was after going shitty and there was pressure and this and that

Mann has owned horses for more than 30 years. He knew the score: they break your heart and rob you blind. He couldn’t resist. Over the years, nearly every trainer in Limerick knew the value of his patronage, from John Neville to Eric McNamara to Michael Hourigan to Charles Byrnes to Paddy.

“Racing only started with me through partying and having a pub,” he says. He has made his money in hospitality, first as a chef, and then as everything else: publican, nightclub owner, hotelier, wedding host. In the early 1990s he came home from Boston and bought an old, rambling, ramshackle hotel on the main street in Rathkeale and transformed it into a goldmine.

“I often regretted coming home [from Boston],” says Mann, “but not now. At the start, I regretted it for a good few years, especially when business was after going shitty and there was pressure and this and that. I remember one night I was below in the sewerage, down here, and the rain coming down on me, and the toilets blocked, and I inside in the middle of it, rodding the pipes, and I said: ‘What the f**k did you do? And look at you now, inside in a sewer.’ I missed it a lot. I missed it an awful lot.”

Twenty years ago, Mann turned the hotel into a venue for Traveller weddings. It was a niche market with specific requirements. In Rathkeale the demand was huge. Piece by piece, he gutted the building and made it fit for purpose. Renovations are on-going. In Big Fat Gypsy Weddings, the Channel 4 reality TV series, at least three of the episodes revolved around Mann’s hotel, glittering in its wedding garb.

Mann owns a pub in Limerick city too, and another in Newcastle West. Between one thing and another, racing was his release valve. He owned winners over the years, but never a star, and nothing that resembled a Cheltenham Festival horse.

No other meeting trades so heavily on dreams, and cuts them without blinking. Mann was at Cheltenham with Michael Hourigan when Beef or Salmon was sent off favourite for the Gold Cup, and bombed out; he was with Hourigan, too, on the day that Doran’s Pride lost his life in the Foxhunters. The market for Cheltenham dreams, though, never fails.

With The Real Whacker, all of that came slowly. Neville bought him for an client at the sales, as a three-year-old, and the client stiffed him. Mann took a leg and Neville was left with the rest. The trainer knew he was good. Neville took him to England.

On his first run over there he won in Carlisle, at 22/1. Neville told Mann to back him; the owner did what he was told. By the end of that season, he was due to run in the Albert Bartlett, the grade one race for staying novice hurdlers at the Festival. Mann landed at the track, floating.

“I walked in the gate and I knew from Paddy’s face that something was wrong. ‘I’ve bad news for you Davy,’ he said. And you know now, I had butterflies. The excitement of fucking Cheltenham. And he says: ‘The Whacker isn’t running today.’ I said: ‘What?!’ ‘I know, I know, I’m gutted too,’ he said. ‘Something isn’t right with him. I’ve had at least five vets with him. He could run, but he’s not right.’ Sure look, what could you do. Down to the Guinness Village and we had three or four pints.”

After another seven or eight pints, I said: ‘Look, c’mere, I’ll give you a thousand there, deposit. I’ve changed my mind. I’m buying.’ Christ, the power of drink

The drinking continued in the Owners and Trainers bar, where Mann was introduced to one of Neville’s other owners. They had picked up a Willie Mullins cast-off for €13,000, a tenth of what Rich Ricci had paid for him as a young horse. N’Golo was beautifully bred, but needed a fresh start. Mann was offered a leg for three and a half grand.

“No, no, no,” I said. “I won’t. I don’t want him. After another seven or eight pints, I said: ‘Look, c’mere, I’ll give you a thousand there, deposit. I’ve changed my mind. I’m buying,’ I said. Christ, the power of drink.” *

They entered N’Golo in the Swinton Hurdle, a 100 grand handicap at Haydock. Sent off at 28/1, he skated in by six and a half lengths. “Over I went,” says Mann. “Sure we cleaned them out [the bookies].”

The horse won in Ann Duffield’s name, but everyone knew that Neville was the trainer. For him, it was a massive breakthrough. The paperwork to transfer his training license from Ireland to England took 9 or 10 months to process, much longer than they had expected. The stables he was renting were in Duffield’s gorgeous yard in North Yorkshire, and from there Neville’s career has taken off.

In the 18 months since he moved to England, he has trained more than 20 winners. Last Monday, at Catterick, he had a treble, for the first time in his career. On Thursday, in Newcastle, he sent out another winner. The Real Whacker has won twice at Cheltenham already this season, and he is second favourite for the three mile novice chase at The Festival. Neville and Mann have two other partners in the horse now, flying together on the magic carpet.

“I’m 30 years waiting for this,” says Mann.

No time lost.