Jimmy Mangan

The first day of the 2024 Punchestown Festival, the last day of April, big day, and Jimmy Mangan arrived at the races without his woolly hat.

You know the hat. The purple and gold striped one, sometimes with a bobble on top, sometimes without. (There are several hats.) You rarely see Jimmy Mangan at the races during the winter without the hat, in the colours of his local GAA club, St Catherine’s from Ballynoe, just beside Conna in County Cork, although the colours often get him mistaken for a Wexford man.

“They’re our family’s racing colours too,” Jimmy tells you.

The colours go back to the day that Jimmy’s father Paddy was going racing, he had a runner in a point-to-point but he had no silks for his rider, no woolly jumper, no colours. So he went to the local GAA club and asked if he could borrow one of the hurlers’ jerseys. That was the beginning of the purple and gold. But the hat was absent on the first day of the 2024 Punchestown Festival in April, when Spillane’s Tower stepped up in distance to three miles and one furlong for the first time to contest the Grade 1 Dooleys Insurance Group Champion Novice Chase. “I took a different coat to the races that day,” recalls Jimmy. “And when I got to Punchestown and put my hand in my coat pocket, no hat. My head gets cold. Usually, I could do without the coat, but not without the hat!”

Maybe it was for luck, because Spillane’s Tower was very good at Punchestown, he stayed on well on the far side to get home by three parts of a length from Monty’s Star, the pair of them clear of their rivals.

Spillane’s Tower had been very good for a while though, and Jimmy Mangan recognised the talent of JP McManus’ horse very soon after he arrived into his yard. He had had horses for the champion owner before, but not for a while. Well Covered was the best of them, a promising horse, winner of his maiden hurdle at Limerick’s Christmas Festival in 2008, whose career was cut short far too early.

“I was chatting to Frank Berry (JP McManus’ racing manager) at the races one day,” says Jimmy. “And I just said to him, have you a nice horse for me?  He just said, leave it with me.”

Frank Berry and Jimmy Mangan go way back. Berry rode winners for the trainer in his days as a rider and, sure enough, true to his word, shortly after that conversation, a young horse arrived into the yard, by Walk In The Park, bred by JP and Noreen McManus out of their mare In The Habit.

“He just did everything easily from the start,” says the trainer. “He always had class, he always had this cruising speed. We always thought that he was a good horse.”

Jimmy Mangan has been dealing with horses all his life. He rode through the 1970s, one of the top point-to-point riders of that era, and he trained through the 1980s, taking over the licence from his father in 1982. And he proved from early that he could train a good horse when he had a good horse to train.


He won the Galway Plate in 1997 with a horse he bought for a song, Stroll Home, and he won the Thyestes Chase in 2010 with Whinstone Boy. And then, of course, there was Monty’s Pass, who won the Kerry National at Listowel in September 2002, and, famously, won the Aintree Grand National under Barry Geraghty just over six months later.

Jimmy Mangan’s association with the most famous horse race in the world runs deeper than that too. He foaled the 2004 Grand National winner Amberleigh House, and he bought the 2002 Grand National winner Bindaree as a yearling and sold him as a three-year-old. You can’t keep them all. Needs must.

“A wise man once said to me, a butcher can’t eat all his own meat.”

Jimmy’s father bred the 1956 Champion Hurdle winner Doorknocker, and he foaled Dawn Run for her breeder John Riordan. And Jimmy himself has bred many talented individuals, including Tolworth Hurdle winner Minella Class and his half-brother, the Leamington Hurdle winner Deputy Dan, as well as talented chasers Frascati Park and Psycho.

He trained Conna Castle to win the Powers Gold Cup in 2008, the Germany gelding getting up in a thriller to get the better of Big Zeb, the pair of them clear, to provide his trainer with his first Grade 1 winner. He had to wait 16 years for his second Grade 1 win, he had to wait until last April, when Spillane’s Tower landed the latest iteration of the Powers, the WillowWarm Gold Cup.

“That was a great day,” says Jimmy. “That was the race that we were aiming for, and it was brilliant to win it again. He was never going to Cheltenham last season.”

Then Spillane’s Tower went to Punchestown and bagged his second Grade 1 win, a third Grade 1 win for his trainer.


“I’d say not going to Cheltenham last season was the winning of the Grade 1 races at Fairyhouse and Punchestown.”

Cheltenham is on the horizon this season though, and Spillane’s Tower is as short as 8/1 for the Gold Cup and as short as 5/1 in places for the Ryanair Chase. He made the transition from top-class novice of last season into the big league when he finished second in the John Durkan Chase on his debut this season, beaten a half a length by Fact To File, with dual Cheltenham Gold Cup winner Galopin Des Champs behind him in third.

“The reception that he got after the John Durkan Chase,” says Jimmy. “It was unbelievable. For finishing second. I had to check again to make sure he hadn’t won the race!”

In the short term, there’s Christmas, the Christmas Festivals, and the King George VI Chase at Kempton on St Stephen’s Day, as long as the ground allows.

“He’s in great form,” says the trainer. “He has come out of the John Durkan Chase great, and it would be brilliant to go to the King George. He will only go there though if the ground is soft enough for him. His owner is of the same mind. The most important thing is to do the right thing by the horse.”

The Walk In The Park gelding has the option of going to the Savills Chase at Leopardstown if he doesn't go to Kempton, but he won’t run anywhere over Christmas if the ground is not soft enough. In that instance, he would wait for the Irish Gold Cup in February.

“We need to mind him,” says Jimmy thoughtfully. “He’s beginning to be a people’s horse. Everywhere I go now, I go into Fermoy, into Tallow, and everyone is asking me: how’s Spillane’s Tower.”

Very good, is the answer.

© The Sunday Times, 14th Dec 2024