Motherway: She’s a cracker
AS HE loaded his mare onto the truck early Wednesday morning ahead of the road trip to Dublin and the onward ferry journey to Liverpool, James Motherway reflected that this racing business truly is the real theatre of dreams. Forget all that football nonsense, he thought, racing is the one sport – more than any other – where the possible and the fantastical collide in equal measures.
Why, just a week previous, he was the trainer – unheard of twelve months previously until his mare sprung a 25/1 shock win in the Irish Grand National – in a small east Cork yard with no more than 17 inmates. And then JP McManus entered the picture. JP, the multi-millionaire who has been racing’s greatest benefactor over the past couple of decades, bought his mare.
Racing dreams don’t get any more far-fetched than that, unless of course the mare were to go and win the biggest race of the lot, the Aintree Grand National. We will know the answer to that sometime after 4.15 this afternoon, but until then James Motherway will still be dreaming outrageous dreams. And why not? After all, everything else to do with the mare has been pretty implausible even in the great inconceivable scheme of things racing.
The ‘mare’ we’re concerned with here is called Bluesea Cracker and last Thursday week Motherway called a meeting of the seven member Note The Link syndicate to his Churchtown South base to tell them he had had a phone call ‘out of the blue’ from Fr ank Berry. This news might not have caused much excitement among their ranks, other than the fact that Berry is JP’s racing manager and a call from him could only mean one thing: JP wanted their horse.
They met at Motherway’s Ballyregan Lodge – ‘an emotional meeting’ – and discussed the offer and by Friday the papers were reporting they had done a deal with JP’s team. Everything was not fully settled until the Sunday night, but by then the syndicate knew the horse was going to run in the National in the famous green and gold McManus colours.
So where does the Bluesea Cracker story start and how has the mare reached the point where one of the wealthiest men in racing had to have her? Motherway explains: “I basically got her through a friend of mine, Patrick Donovan, who only lives over the road here. At the time we had a couple of horses and they were running well and it was probably just as I was starting to get noticed as a trainer. That was the summer of ’05 and Patrick told the head man of the syndicate that owned her, James O’Sullivan, he should send the horse to me. From that point of view it was pure luck she came here.”
Bluesea Cracker is so named because she legendarily went crackers when she saw the blue sea off O’Sullivan’s land at Saleen, overlooking Cork harbour, having been sent there by breeder and fellow syndicate member Sean Murphy. The pair, along with James O’Sullivan, Adrian Horgan, Patricia Burchill, Willie Finn, Matt Ahern and Brian Holland then collectively decided to ask Motherway to train the horse.
“I drove down to Saleen one grand summer’s evening and she was outside in t he paddock and I liked the look of her straight away. She had a bit of size and presence about her and everything was in the right place conformation-wise. I gave her a little hunt across the field and she had a good trot to her and a good walk and I felt she could be something. But then I asked James to show me her pedigree and I got a bit of a shock. There was absolutely nothing on the pedigree to recommend her. I’d never heard of the sire (Buster King) or the mare (Zelies Pet), but then a lot of the horses here wouldn’t have fantastic pedigrees, so that was not a problem. And, in this game you never know what you’ve got. Look at a lot of National Hunt superstars – Arkle, Captain Christy, Florida Pearl, Beef Or Salmon – if you took them off the page, there’d be nothing in their pedigree. A lot of them are freaks, but they just have it.”
Motherway himself had taken out a full training licence in 2004, completing the Turf Club trainers’ course with the likes of Philip Fenton and Jarleth Fahy. His father Bruce had had a permit to train for many years, but the family operation was getting in owners who wanted to run their horses on the track, so it was decided that James would get a full licence and see where it went.
Bluesea arrived along shortly after that. In fact, James had scored his first track winner in Cork with a beast called Hickory Hill in 2004 and the following season the ‘raw three-year-old’ arrived in the Churchtown South yard. She had been broken and was riding at that time, so James set about trying to find out if she could be a racehorse.
“And here we are, six years on, on the verge of running at Aintree,” he says, the whiff of disbelief palpable.
“When you start out with a young racehorse like that, you never imagine these things are going to happen. But that’s the joy of it for people – the thought that someday you might stumble across a superstar. Thankfully it happened to us.”
Naturally enough Bluesea Cracker – “a Christian to ride, but a cantankerous lady otherwise” has been the flagship for the Motherway yard for four years or so now, but looking back over her career the trainer reckons she has had plenty of luck on her side.
“She fractured her pelvis just before she turned four. I was doing a bit of work with her on the flat and she was swinging on the bridle – we knew even then she was fairly decent – but the next minute…boom…she lost her action and when I pulled her up, she was duck lame.”
He genuinely thought her career was over before it started, but after three months box rest and a bit of TLC, they were back in action and she won her maiden point-to-point by 25 lengths at Boulta in 2006.
Then in March the following year, with Denis O’Regan up, she won a maiden hurdle in Clonmel.
“She showed speed and stamina and when Denis got off her that day and he said ‘this one will make some chaser.’ We kind of knew she jumped a fence better than she jumped a hurdle; she jumped hurdles well but not like a real hurdler should and she always made the shape of a horse that wanted bigger obstacles.
“But I was afraid to send her chasing the following season because she was still only five and a bit young to take on the hustle and bustle of the chasing game, so we gave her an extra year hurdling.”
And so it was that she won her novice chase at Fairyhouse in October ’08 with Tom Doyle riding and she won easily, winning by eight lengths. Both trainer and jockey were impressed by the fact the horse didn’t put a foot wrong. “She was deadly,” Motherway maintains, “it was very natural for her.”
Another novice victory at Limerick under Andy McNamara followed (besting old rival Oscar Time, who she meets again today) and Team Cracker really knew they had something decent.
However, things rarely run smooth in the jumping game and after a suspensory ligament scare in 2009, the mare did not reappear until Leopardstown the following February and even then she was pulled up by Davy Condon. All concerned thought the horse was goosed, but it transpired she was in season and had her mind on things other than racing.
A second in the Leinster National to Ballytrim at Naas followed and the only big pot then left that season was the Irish National at Fairyhouse. Davy Condon should have ridden but was serving a suspension, so Motherway persuaded Andy McNamara to do 10st 3lbs (he put up a pound overweight). They won, once more beating Oscar Time.
The mare did make one mistake in that race – and remember she has never fallen in her life – when blinded at the fence at the top of Ballyhack when the field was backed up by loose horses. She hit the fence and pecked on landing, but the following Selection Box hit her up the ass and gave her momentum at a critical juncture.
“Other than that she was foot perfect. She’s clever and she can help herself if she has to. Hopefully that will stand to her at Aintree,” Motherway says.
He does admit that while he was not saying it publicly at the time, his immediate focus after Fairyhouse was on Aintree. It might have been an obvious route, but the trained wanted to make sure that everyone in Team Cracker was up for the challenge.
Her preparation has been unspectacular and a sixth place in the Bobbyjo Chase at Fairyhouse was disappointing for everyone but the connections. The Midnight Club won and was promptly installed as one of the Aintree favourites, but Motherway says he was actually delighted by the performance.
“She ran well there, if it wasn’t brilliant but she scoped badly afterwards and we knew there had been something wrong, so I’m thrilled that’s all out of the way now. We know now there’s more in her.”
And today? “If she pops around and makes it back safely that’s a start; anything after that will be a bonus. On paper it is one of the most competitive Nationals I have seen for a while. It looks hot to me and you hope that some of the fancied runners don’t take to the fences while the mare does. We’ll know by the time she gets to Becher’s. It is a privilege to train a horse for JP McManus but the fact of the matter is that Bluesea Cracker made me and while it will be unusual to see her wearing the green and gold and not the lads’ colours, I just hope she is as lucky for him as she has been for the lads.”
