HOW MANY WERE present to bask in the immediate glow of success? More than Ned Hogarty could wrap his head around anyway. Certainly more than he had forecast.
Cheltenham Thursday 2022 had a wild, boisterous feel to it, those joyous scenes sparked by Flooring Porter tearing up the hill to land the Stayers’ Hurdle for the second year on the spin.
Looking around the parade ring afterwards at Prestbury Park, Hogarty was hit with familiar faces from the south Roscommon and east Galway communities where the owners call home.
The contrast to 12 months previous was stark. The number gathered for that Grade 1 Cheltenham breakthrough was small, conditioned by the Covid-19 upheaval. That day, jockey Danny Mullins, groom Caragh Monaghan and trainer Gavin Cromwell, all stood with their prized equine victor, the bottom half of their faces obscured by the masks that were mandatory.
There was joy felt by those watching at home, the four members of the Flooring Porter Syndicate – Ned, Kerrill Creaven, Tommy and Alan Sweeney – all whooping and hollering to each other on FaceTime when their hero came first past the post. Yet there was natural regret at the sense of isolation.
In 2022 they felt they were making amends, back to defend the Stayers’ crown, appreciative of their fortune this time in being present on the track.
“Ah sure that’s what it’s all about, it was just fantastic to be over there,” says Hogarty.
“It was far more special. First time around, you didn’t have the same grasp whatsoever.
“You can’t believe it when you’re in the winner’s enclosure, you’d be pinching yourself. It was just magic.”
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This was never a stated ambition from the outset. As Hogarty puts it, racing is a game where “99 things can go right and one thing comes along to mess you up.”
A Grade 1 winner, triumphant in successive Stayers’ Hurdles at Cheltenham?
Those days of glory did not govern anyone’s thinking starting off.
“He was a very cheap purchase at a Goffs sale,” recalls Cromwell. “The lads bought him off me off a Facebook ad. He was unbroken at that stage.
“Sometimes we’d have some of those cheaper ones that we’d stick up on Facebook and we have had a bit of interest and people buying them off us.
Some have been lucky and some haven’t.
“Flooring Porter definitely falls into the lucky category. He started off at a very low level. I don’t think anybody thought at any stage that he’d ever be a Grade
1 horse. Over time he’s just gone up through the ranks and it’s fairytale stuff really. It’s nice to see the smaller owner on the big stage.”
Ned runs a flooring business in Ballinasloe. He was thinking of evenings out at a local track with a horse to cheer on. Hogarty, Creaven and the Sweeneys are lifelong racing fans. Ned has been friends for years with Alan, who was running The Countryman pub in nearby Creagh at the time. Tommy is Alan’s father and Kerrill is Alan’s uncle. Their occupations merged in the simple process to name the horse.
Over the years they have had different roles in different syndicates, horses sent to train with Noel Meade and Leslie Young and Paul Gilligan. Kerrill was involved with Essex, a horse that built up serious promise over the 2004-05 national hunt season, picking up wins in the Irish Cesarewitch, the Pierse Hurdle at Leopardstown and the Totesport Trophy. There were rising hopes before that year’s Champion Hurdle but a finish down the field at Cheltenham was the outcome.
Pragmatism influenced their initial hopes for Flooring Porter, their modest investment at €6,000.
“When you buy a horse for that kind of money, you didn’t expect that level of success. If you won a handicap in Sligo or Kilbeggan or Roscommon or somewhere, you would have been happy. We were hoping for a bit of fun. This fella came along and worked out grand, didn’t he?”
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Quirky. Ask anyone involved in the Flooring Porter operation for a one-word summation of the horse and that tends to be the one they reach for.
“Once he’s in his routine, he’s good,” says Cromwell. “We have the hang of him and he has the hang of us now at this stage. On race day he is a little bit quirky.
He’s a mind of his own. He has got better with age.”
The attitude is reflected on race day mostly, that front-foot style in evidence for both Cheltenham triumphs when Flooring Porter made the running from the off.
“We don’t want to brand him as a one-trick pony either,” argues Hogarty.
“He doesn’t have to lead from the front but in Cheltenham the last two runs now, he has not been headed once. So we won’t be giving up that tactic. But if some new kid on the block wants to go off like a scalded cat, we’re not going to cut our own throats either, you’ll let him off.”
It is simple to identify the turning point in Flooring Porter’s career.
Saturday, December 5, 2020: the eCOMM Merchant Solutions Handicap Hurdle in Navan.
Before that there had been 12 runs in the preceding 17 months. The results sheet featured three wins, Bellewstown in August 2019, Cork in October 2020
and Gowran Park in July 2020. What it all added up to was unclear and what route they were traveling on was uncertain.
But 20 days before Christmas at the Meath track, the wider outlook changed.
“I thought even running in that race in Navan, we were in the deep end,” recalls Cromwell. “And then the manner in which he won, that changed the complexion of everything really. I suggested to Ned that we might supplement him for the Grade 1 at Leopardstown. It was ten grand. They just said go ahead and do it, never hesitated. They’ve been fantastic like that. They deserve the luck they’ve had.”
“When he won in Navan, we knew we’d a horse on our hands then,” says Hogarty. “Prior to that, we had thought he’d lost his way slightly and we gave him a break and he went back to Gowran Park. He jumped throughout in front and he jumped the last and a horse came ahead of him and he didn’t throw in the towel and I said, ‘Now we’ve a horse.’ He battled and got up on the line.
“And then we went to Navan and he went off 22/1 and sure he won by 12 lengths.
“Jonathan Moore was riding him the same day and he just had to let him off and sure he bowled along in front. I was even talking to jockeys after, to Seán Flanagan and Davy Russell, who was on the favourite, a horse called The Bosses Oscar. He was thinking, ‘When is this lad coming back to us?’ And then he was like, ‘This lad isn’t coming back to us, he’s gone.’”
That was the launchpad for the Christmas Hurdle glory at Leopardstown and that propelled them on to Cheltenham, a flare of joy amidst the Covid gloom. That’s where the relationship swerved on an alternative course. Moore, the pilot for the breakthrough December wins, stood himself down on the morning of the Stayers’ Hurdle, still feeling the effects of a punishing fall at Naas the previous Sunday.
He suggested Mullins as a replacement and that paved the way for a new partnership, that has subsequently thrived.
“We’ve a lot to be grateful to Jonathan Moore for,” says Hogarty. “Jonathan campaigned that we supplemented him for the Christmas Hurdle in the first year. Jonathan was very, very sweet on him. If we hadn’t that confidence from Jonathan, God knows. Maybe he mightn’t have been entered. If he hadn’t won that, he mightn’t have never went to Cheltenham. I’d make sure that anyone I was talking to, I’d mention Jonathan.
“Not to take away from Danny either. They get on well, I wouldn’t break up the partnership. If anyone named Danny Mullins’ top horse, sure you’re probably going to say Flooring Porter. He’s given Danny his only two Cheltenham winners.”
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St Patrick’s Day 2022
Another milestone for the Flooring Porter Syndicate. All gathered as eyewitnesses on race day.
“During the lockdown period, we missed out on races,” says Hogarty.
“This year was unbelievable. Now we’d be frequent visitors to Cheltenham, but that morning of the race was just…Oh my God.
“The buzz was magic.”
There were no wins picked up between Cheltenham 2021 and Cheltenham 2022 but that run did not damage spirits for the connections.
“He is a bit tricky,” outlines Cromwell. “He went to Punchestown after the first Stayers’, got a bit of a run going down to the start and he just got a little bit lit up. It was a warm day, they were slow in gathering.
“It was going the wrong direction for him too, going right-handed, I think he’s better going left. It just didn’t happen on the day. He went to the Lismullen Hurdle and he was just a bit unlucky there, caught the top part of a hurdle and turned upside down. We went to Leopardstown to the Grade 1 again, there was a bit of controversy over the start that day. He ran a cracker but just didn’t get the ideal start.
“Then back to Cheltenham when he won. Went to Aintree then three weeks later, ran a very creditable race again. He won on the days that mattered anyway, the Stayers’ Hurdle.”
“I myself thought it was a big run (at Leopardstown when second to Klassical Dream who stole a march in that questionable start) and I would have been looking at the English horses,” states Hogarty of his pre-race mood.
“The Cesarewitch winner (Buzz), he went out of it early. You’d be looking at the likes of Paisley Park. Thyme Hill, we hadn’t met him. I was kind of somewhat apprehensive about him but the vibes we were getting from Gavin were that he was going well.
“Now it rained all day on the Wednesday, it was torrential, and on the Thursday morning. We’re not ground dependent, which is great, but I thought it might play into Willie Mullins horses.
“But look it sure we trotted off in front, Danny had a fair clock that day now. He didn’t put a foot wrong, thank God we galloped to the line.”
That prompted the frenzied euphoria in the winner’s enclosure. Galway All-Ireland winning hurlers James Skehill – a nephew of Kerrill’s – and Aidan Harte were part of the celebratory camp.
Hogarty’s local GAA club Padraig Pearses had soared to new heights last winter with Roscommon and Connacht football titles.
But this was a sporting achievement on a different level.
“A good few people from around the parish came. We didn’t realise there was as many there until we were all in the winner’s enclosure. We had travelled over on the Tuesday morning early, about 10 or 12 of us. Thursday then I knew there was a good few coming.
“I gave out the black and white scarves in the hotel that morning, I think we had 20. Some people had bought them at home. But even look at the images, the HRI lady was telling me they’re using that picture for all the promotions for horse ownership, it looks like they were loads.
“There were four local young fellas, I did not know they were coming. There was a very good friend of mine, we’d a horse years ago together, he’s a pub in England and he was in the parade ring. I didn’t know he was there until I got the clap on the back when he was jumping the last. He was standing behind me watching it. It brought a lot of people together.”
“There’s only four people involved in the syndicate, but if you look at the pictures, it looked like there was 50 people involved,” says Cromwell. “The owners did that. They made everybody feel part of the horse and that’s the way they wanted it. It was fantastic.
“It was very strange last year with Covid, being at Cheltenham and nobody there, locked away in a hotel room and celebrating on my own, just at the end of a phone. When you roll forward to 2022, to have the owners and everybody there, it was just so much better.”
As a sporting story they have caught the wider imagination. Hogarty understands the magnetism of the tale – a group of friends pooling a small sum together and reaping unimaginable riches in terms of racing prestige. And it’s all down to the horse.
“He was the talk of the whole parish and the town here. Lucky enough it left a few quid around the place. We’re in business here and I still have people coming in buying stuff and saying, ‘Oh, Flooring Porter is paying for that.’
“The beauty of it, he’s not been the housewife’s price at 5-2 or 6-4, he was winning in double figures anyway. If anyone had a score each-way, it left a few quid in the pocket. You didn’t have to be punting heavy, it was great the way that worked out.
“It’s a catchy name. Anyone I talk to, he’s known all over – Flooring Porter.
“I suppose it’s an ordinary story. You hear of sheikhs buying horses for millions, this kind of craic. It just goes to show you don’t have to be a sheikh to win a Grade 1. The small boy has a chance.
“It has to be affordable to attract people. You’re not going to get four boys working there on building sites to give 20 grand apiece. But they’ll certainly give two and a half grand apiece or maybe make up 20 grand, and say, ‘There’s four months training and there’s the price of the horse. Let’s see how we get on boys.’ They’re the lads you need. They’re the lads that bring a bit of colour to the races.”
And their ambitions are not stunted yet. Flooring Porter rests alongside the company of Big Buck’s, Inglis Drever and Baracouda as the multiple Stayers’ Hurdle winners over the last couple of decades. They want to push on further now.
“Any horse that can win at Cheltenham Festival, to back it up like that, proves it wasn’t a fluke,” admits Cromwell. “Sure it’s great for everyone in the yard. It
gives everyone a boost. It’s a huge feat but equally so it’s going to be very hard to do it again. We’ll certainly try our damnedest anyway.”
“I always say we’re the new Big Buck’s here,” outlines Hogarty. “This horse is young, his mileage is relatively low. If we keep him sound, he’s easy get fit, he’s easy train. The young fella that looks after him above in Gavin’s, Paddy McGrath, he knows him inside-out. Like he’s a pure lamb at home. A lamb.
“But when you get him to the racecourse, he’s like a thorny wire and that’s what you want.
“He’s only a seven-year-old horse. He’s not a horse that’ll probably ever graduate to chasing. Punch at your weight and do what you’re doing. He’s a huge fanbase now. It’s fantastic. A people’s horse.”
And on they go with a support brigade growing behind them, and Flooring Porter, all the time.
- This article first appeared in the Irish Racing Yearbook, which is available in all good newsagents and bookshops and can be ordered online at irishracingyearbook.com/shop.
