Lord of racing's nursery circuit prepares to make an elegant exit

Enda Bolger has spent much of the last two years answering the same question. "Is he coming racing?" The he is actor Sean Connery. You know, Scottish guy, bald as a coot. Played James Bond in a few films and has been introduced ever since as "007 himself".

When he is not charming millions of gorgeous women who seem to think baldness and a tendency to say shite when he means sight is the sexiest thing on the planet, Connery is a friend of Irish gambler and businessman JP McManus.

As a result, a racehorse called Risk Of Thunder, trained by the aforementioned Bolger, races in Connery's colours. Hence the inevitable "Is he coming" question. Well, cut it out. Bolger has the definitive answer. He ain't.

"At the moment the plan is that he will see the horse when he is out at grass during the summer. He will not be at Punchestown," announces Bolger. "The man has to keep working to allow himself have this horse in training," he says with a grin.

Punchestown is likely to survive the blow even if the female part of the festival crowd might shrivel slightly. For a start, Punchestown is staging its first four-day festival and the new track and complex should now be seen in its best light. In any case, the real story of Punchestown '99 is not Connery but the trainer of his horse.

At the spiritual home of Irish steeplechasing, Enda Bolger could make the sort of unlikely yet totally appropriate exit that Mr Connery would envy. The difference being that Bolger is exiting from a scene that has been his reality for almost 20 years.

Champion point-to-point rider on seven occasions, Bolger has ridden 412 point-to-point winners to date, as well as approximately 100 inside the rules as an amateur. Among those have been Cheltenham winner Elegant Lord, who also races this week.

As a burgeoning training career demands ever more time, Bolger forsook the ride on Elegant Lord this season and next Thursday will be his last competitive ride ever. As it is on Connery's Risk Of Thunder in the La Touche Chase over the unique banks course, there will be an appropriate sense of theatre. No one will appreciate it more than Bolger.

In a game where buzz words like focus have been taken to even further extremes by the likes of Tony McCoy, Bolger has never felt the need for blinkers. A deadly serious horseman, who has probably been the most recognisable face of racing's earthy first cousin, the point-to-point circuit, he still has no difficulty seeing beyond racing's often narrow vision.

Stories about his admiration for and friendship with Bruce Springsteen he now dismisses as "stale news". Nevertheless, next weekend he will be in Manchester to view yet again the man he inevitably refers to as "the Boss".

Then there is the Connery connection. Or the McManus connection. JP does after all own Elegant Lord and Tearaway King, who will be Bolger's penultimate racecourse ride on the first day. If Bolger felt the urge he could name-drop for Ireland. Typically, though, throw names at him and the wisecracks come back like bullets. This is man firmly rooted in racing and reality.

Even with a cheroot clamped almost permanently in place, Bolger is a breath of fresh air in the weighrooms of Ireland. The jockeys' room certainly will be a duller place without him.

So why now? Amateurs after all can go on for much longer than their professional brethern. "Why now? Well I was 36 on Wednesday, that's a big why," he laughs. More seriously, he adds: "I've been finding weight more and more of a problem and I've been struggling to make 12 st. We have more horses in training now and that means spending more time dealing with them and with owners."

Not that there are any regrets.

"I've been doing this for a while now and I'm out on the other side in one piece. I've done alright, the game's been good to me, and I've got a career as a trainer to look forward to," Bolger says, before emphatically denying that he will miss the rollercoaster of race riding in point-to-points and hunter chases that has been his reality for so long.

"I won't miss riding in point-to-points. If I'm not doing something I won't miss it. It's like Elegant Lord at Aintree. I decided I wouldn't ride him a long time ago and there was no problem then when Philip (Fenton) won on him. But if I was to ride him and I'd broken a collarbone the previous week I'd have been gutted.

"It was my own decision and I haven't been riding as good as say three or four years ago. To be in the top lane you have to be totally focussed on riding, looking after yourself and your weight. Not like me when I was going to rock concerts and drinking beer out of plastic cups."

A typical exaggeration. Rock-`n'roll wasters don't have memories such as Elegant Lord's Cheltenham Foxhunters' win in 1996, or the point-to-point weekend in 1988 when he rode eight winners, three at Kilworth's Saturday meeting and five at Friarstown the following day.

Still the point-to-point circuit, so strong in Munster and for which Bolger is ideally placed in Bruree, Limerick, will remain central for Bolger the trainer.

"That's where I'm happiest and most of the 30 odd horses we hope to have next season will be qualified for hunter chases," he says, although he does worry that point-to-points, traditionally jump racing's nursery, have lost some of their flavour.

"Sunday racing and better prizemoney on the tracks have meant that park racing is much more attractive now and the point-to-points have been doing themselves no favours with eight and 10 race cards. Nobody wants that. Also there is so much money around. Ten years ago people automatically sold on their horses. Now, in general, the country is much better off and people can afford to keep a good horse," he concludes.

Over Punchestown's unique bank course, however, there has been no better horse than Risk Of Thunder. "He is a special horse. The majority of horses can get around the course in their own time but Risk Of Thunder puts so much effort into it that he makes it look easy, which it isn't. He just has a panache over the banks. Two years ago he gave a jump over Rubys Double that had never been seen before. I was getting cards from England about it for a long time afterwards.

"For the bank races, a horse has to be well schooled and I was taught by PP Hogan that a horse has to have room and light in the race. That means either being in the first two or three or out the back. Some of the others have not even see a bank and can put the brakes on. It's like the Grand National. You try and get into a rhythm and remember the track," Bolger says.

Remembering the track is not as easy as it sounds at Punchestown. Enda Bolger, however, has honed the craft of racing around the place to a nicety. It will be worth travelling next week to see him practise that craft one last time.