Gavin Cromwell is back for another big Christmas target

A year ago Gavin Cromwell left Leopardstown on St Stephen’s Day juggling both pride and disappointment after Jer’s Girl came up a head short of Apple’s Jade in a prestigious Grade Two hurdle.

Defeat is always bitter but the upside was he hoped the filly’s performance might advertise a capacity to train winners from his small yard near Navan. It’s fair to say 12 months later that hope has been vindicated in spades.

Far from being a flash in the pan, Jer’s Girl continued to progress; she wound up being bought by one of racing’s most powerful owners, JP McManus, and finished the season proving herself top-class by winning twice at Grade One level.

When she returns to Leopardstown for Thursday’s Ryanair Hurdle it is as one of the leading hurdlers in the country and representing a trainer whose profile is resolutely upwards.

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“It has been some year, alright. We’ve got a lot busier with more horses in. We’re building a few more stables and everything has basically improved,” her trainer says.

Certainly the public image of a man who had previously been remarkable both for his distinctive surname and a capacity to juggle training with a farriery business has been transformed.

Shrewd

Those within racing had always acknowledged Cromwell’s shrewd capacity to extract the maximum results from meagre resources. But he is operating at another level again these days.

It’s why he was juggling emotions again at Chepstow on Tuesday after the veteran Raz De Maree finished runner-up to Native River in no less a prize than the Welsh Grand National.

Cromwell has got a new lease of life out of the veteran Raz De Maree this winter and the horse belied 33/1 odds.

“I was delighted but disappointed: I was expecting a big run and if the ground had been softer, the winner probably wouldn’t have even run,” he reflects.

It was further proof though of how the 42-year-old is operating on a very different level to what he was.

In 2013 he remembers having a single horse in his yard. Just a year ago he’d increased that to a dozen. Now he’s up to over 30. However, proof that circumstances haven’t conspired to alter his perspective isn’t hard to find.

“I’m still shoeing, still juggling that with training, every day, even though I have got more help now,” he says, seemingly eager to reassure that success isn’t easing up a daily work schedule which puts most everyone else’s to shame.

Cromwell juggles riding out and supervising his own string before heading out to shoe horses for trainers such as Gordon Elliott. Then it is home again to the perpetual headaches of training racehorses, a task the former amateur rider has always relished.

Top table

It is Jer’s Girl who has brought him to racing’s top table and with just five lining up for the final-day Christmas festival feature she is likely to make her presence felt at Grade One level again.

She renews rivalry with Nichols Canyon who beat her by a dozen lengths in last month’s Morgiana where she took on the favourite from some way out and paid the price in the closing stages on soft ground.

Conditions will be quicker this time and Cromwell says: “I would prefer further than two miles on this ground. She has no problem with the ground, but it would be better if it was two-and-a-half miles. I do think she has improved for the Morgiana but it’s still a big ask.”

However, if a year is a long time in racing, a lot can change in a month too.