Durack Backing Breeze-Up Buys

What a race in which to hope for a breakthrough-this white-knuckle stampede, round and round the roulette wheel of the Roodee. But if Cayirli (Fr) (Medicean {GB}) will need luck in the 188Bet Chester Cup on Friday, then his trainer has certainly earned it.

Not just because Seamus Durack's talents have, hitherto, seldom been matched by opportunity. Nor because his career as a jump jockey was effectively ended by such a dreadful fall, his femur broken in three and his hip dislocated. There are plenty of others around, after all, with similar complaints; plenty of others dismayed to see owners herd so unimaginatively round the same, few fashionable yards. But this is a horseman-reflective, acute, inquisitive-of unusual resources. And now, moreover, he has matched need with nerve.

This spring the Irishman took a step back, and recognised three things. One was that a stable as small as the one he has been operating in Upper Lambourn for the past five years could ill afford the dilution of its precious successes by such an even split between Flat and jump horses. Another was that preserving a suitable standard would reduce even the numbers he had to maybe a dozen or so. And the other was that the place to do something about the situation, and quickly, was the breeze-ups.

At Ascot, Doncaster and the Craven, Durack assembled no fewer than eight new recruits to The Croft. A sluggish market has been partly blamed on a lack of trainers with orders. But Durack didn't have the orders, either. He just had belief, and bottle.

“Sometimes you have to take calculated risks,” he says. “I wouldn't necessarily have anyone to move these horses onto, straightaway, but otherwise you won't have anything at all. So I suppose you have to be prepared for things to go against you as well. Which is grand, I'm not complaining, that's the nature of the game.”

“We've been doing well with the type of horses we've had, but had got too static. Last year we had a few that had reached a plateau. We bought a few nice older horses at the end of the year, but had no 2-year-olds. So I just wanted to be a bit aggressive and start pushing things forward. It's hard to find clients, but I know that these horses were all well bought.”

“The ground has been very loose at some of the sales, and a lot of the horses didn't handle it. People have been relying more and more on times and stride length, they're even adjusting for some vendors breezing quicker or slower than others. But I don't know if they have often come across this type of ground and the effect it can have, especially on more backward horses.”

Even in a market of inflated catalogues and depressed demand, Durack still had to look for an angle. At the Craven Sale, for instance, he cut a deal for a Dutch Art (GB) (Medicean {GB}) colt bought in by Oak Tree Farm for 50,000gns. His dam is out of a half-sister to three Group/Grade 1 winners in Eagle Mountain (GB) (Rock Of Gibraltar {Ire}), Dank (GB)(Dansili {GB}) and Sulk (Ire) (Selkirk).

“I think he'd have made 200 grand, plus, if his X-rays had been clean,” Durack said. “He breezed very fast, finished really strong, the times and data were really good and Norman [Williamson] had told me how nice he was. The X-rays of his knees weren't great, but I think a lot of horses with worse X-rays are running around as 4- and 5-year-olds. He's very sound and I'm going to crack on with him. He could be a Royal Ascot horse, I think he's tremendous value.”

At the same sale Durack picked up a strapping Exceed And Excel (Aus) (Danehill) colt from a top-class Aga Khan family for 75,000gns, while the three he bought at Ascot and one at Doncaster were supplemented by a couple of unsold lots entrusted to his care with a brief to draw out their value.

And that, despite the limited chances he has had, is demonstrably something Durack is equipped to do. Take his very first winner, Qaraaba (GB) (Shamardal), a Shadwell cast-off who had been able to win a maiden at two for John Dunlop but had then disappeared until the July Sale at Tattersalls.

“She obviously had issues,” the 42-year-old recalls. “She was a massive unit, a typical Shamardal, and they said she was hanging, she was running off the gallops, she was tying up. It was nearly a year before we ironed out her problems and got her to win.”

She did so, in a Sandown handicap, off 73. By the time Peter Deal sold her to join Simon Callaghan in California, she was rated 102 and had been beaten barely a length in the Wolferton at Royal Ascot. In four starts leading up to that race, she had been beaten only by a subsequent group winner running off 85.

“Unfortunately at Ascot she was drawn widest, was very keen and dropped in last,” Durack says. “That didn't really suit the track, and she ended up not quite getting there. But Peter sold her very well, to Lady Bamford and Michael Tabor, and she did win a Grade III for Simon before getting injured.”

Nor was that a flash in the pan. The Rectifier (Langfuhr) was a 6-year-old rated 88 when Durack restored him to form, winning four races in a year on his way up to 106. Then there was the painful case of Litigant (GB) (Sinndar {Ire}), found at Doncaster in January 2013 for just £18,500. It was 18 months since his last start for Andre Fabre, and he was reputed to have a back problem; he was “gobby,” wouldn't accept the bit.

Durack discovered that the horse had a blind wolf tooth, and also fired his palate. After flying into second on his debut for the yard, Litigant won his next three races including the All-Weather Championship Marathon. Here was the horse to put his trainer on the map.

But Litigant got a leg; and, during his absence, his owner moved his horses on. (Among them was one who had joined Durack with a career record of 0-15 and a rating of 65, only to reel off three wins in a row before running fourth in the November Handicap off 88.) Litigant resurfaced for Joe Tuite and promptly won the Ebor.

Unbowed, last year Durack received a steeplechaser from Ireland palpably on the downgrade: 2 1/2 years without a win, and tailed off in blinkers on his last start. He won his second, third and fourth starts for Durack, advancing his rating from 102 to 129 in the process.

And now there is Cayirli, a roll of the dice-at €80,000 in Arqana's Autumn Sale in 2015-on an Aga Khan horse who had been plying his trade at 10 furlongs for Jean-Claude Rouget.

“He's out of a Montjeu mare,” Durack says. “I'd looked at the videos and he was getting tapped for toe before staying on, dropped in too far a couple of times as well. I was sure one of the jump lads would be in for him, but they were going for the bigger horses; he has grown quite a bit since coming here.”

Durack targeted the Ascot S., but the horse missed the cut so was chanced in the Queen Alexandra instead. Making only his fourth start for the yard, and dismissed at 40-1, he finished second of 18. Since then, Cayirli developed a problem tying up. But Durack has changed his diet and put him on a herbal mix. After a 537-day absence, the forgotten 6-year-old reappeared in the Queen's Prize at Kempton last month. He started at 50-1, was always travelling strongly, and bolted up. A perfectly reasonable 5lbs hike guarantees him a start at Chester.

“Faye Bramley used to ride Litigant a lot, and she says he's as good,” Durack says. “What he has now, that he didn't have before, is a gear. Obviously stayers improve with time. That massive run at Ascot maybe knocked him for the rest of the year. But he's a lot stronger now.”

Even the fact that few of around 450 winners Durack rode as a jockey were of elite calibre arguably represents an ideal grounding. Very often it is the journeymen, not the champion jockeys, who prove best equipped for the day-to-day problems of the horse in training. But few insiders to the sport, of any rank, have shared Durack's determination to ask each question afresh; to learn for himself, rather than as someone else's assistant. As such, perhaps the key to what sets him apart is that little, throwaway detail in Cayirli's story, about tracking down a herbal treatment.

“I've done it all methodically, really educated myself through the whole field,” Durack stresses. “If I don't know something, I'll research it until I know it inside out. I've done it for myself, first hand. If I do something, it's not because I'm following somebody else but because I have seen all the effects or drawbacks of all different types of exercise. It probably took me more time that way, but it's been a really interesting learning curve.”

“If you can do it by trial and error, and approach it scientifically, I think in the long run it's probably the best way to learn. I suppose it's a bit similar to the way Martin Pipe figured it out for himself. Obviously I wouldn't even remotely compare myself to him. But he just went through that process of figuring it out when he didn't have any experience.”

Durack, in contrast, is a lifelong horseman. So, for all his natural modesty, he has a persuasive conviction. “My horses get a good base of fitness and strength, and then they start doing shorter, faster work,” he explains. “I'm surprised how little you get away with jumpers, especially, to keep them fresh and hold their form. A lot of jump horses you see at the races get very lean and over-trained. We've had horses that looked like hat-racks before and given them a break, fed them and built them up into our regime-and then they're eating away and they're fresh.”

“I can definitely train. It takes time to get a good team, the way we have now. There's no corners cut, and we try and communicate well with the owners. But it's the same as riding: you can just be tipping away and then when you get a bit of success, the whole thing can snowball.”