At home with immortality

THE SATURDAY INTERVIEW: EILEEN BATTERSBYinterviews John Oxx

FOG CONSOLIDATES the darkness over the Curragh of Kildare. Suddenly, it is morning, dank and cold. In this racing yard, as in similar yards everywhere, the day began before dawn. The first morning feed is already eaten and the big green wheelbarrows are beginning to fill with soiled night straw. Staff are sweeping up bits of wayward hay. Shovels are out. There’s the sound of metal striking the ground, the scraping sound of pitchforks. Bursts of voices rise and fade away. Activity is everywhere and the odd whinny cuts through the cold air.

This is a busy place. The greetings are brief. A tractor is moving on the other side of the long stable block wall. “Where’s the boss?” asks a small man in a cap of another man also wearing a cap. We walk down the length of one yard and then double back.

Approaching from the opposite direction is trainer John Oxx. “There he is,” says the yard man, who jogs back to his wheelbarrow and continues his chores. Oxx looks happy – as so he should. His latest achievement, a second Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe and a terrific win for Alandi in the Prix du Cadran, in a career of achievements including 37 Group 1 winners, has lifted the morale of recession Ireland. It is a script worthy of Hollywood. Riders carrying tack nod and attend to the rides assigned them. In the brief lull before his phone starts ringing again, Oxx tells me “we’ll meet him, just before he leaves for the gallops and then we’ll follow them in the jeep”. Out of the upper yard two mounted horses appear, a bay colt followed by an older horse, a chestnut gelding.

“Here he is,” says Oxx. No further introduction is necessary. It is an exciting moment and, to be honest, emotional. Images of his latest – now final – victory flicker across the mind’s inner camera. Here is the horse that, steered by Mick Kinane, burst through a keyhole in a wall of world-class horses. There is something about the aura of a champion, particularly a champion horse and, most emphatically, this champion who has captured the world’s imagination. Sea The Stars is wide awake and has already been walking for about an hour.

He is alert and calm, surprisingly relaxed; an aircraft could land beside him and he would most likely decide to examine it. “He’s very inquisitive, and interested in everything. He’ll give a roar or two, just to let everyone know he’s here,” says Oxx.

The colt is also well muscled and long-backed, with developed quarters, yet his relaxed demeanour creates an impression of being compact despite his size. He is a hero: immortality assured and only three years old. Of course I want to hug him but instead practise restraint and whisper, “Well done, you’re a great guy.” He drops his muzzle into my hand and agrees. His Brazilian exercise rider, Alex Da Silva, smiles broadly.

The sun has appeared as if on cue. “Take them on out,” says Oxx, “we’ll follow you over.” Oxx is quiet and unobtrusive. Although he must be well used to driving over the Curragh, which begins across the road from his yard and his home, he still loves the ritual that has always been part of his life. It is the ideal place for training horses. The sun is now full in a clear sky, the morning is bright and the wide green expanse looks magnificent. Way off in the distance, tiny specks are visible, other horses in training. Oxx points to a peat gallop, the oldest in Ireland. Here and there are various surfaces, all used in the process of training a racehorse.

Meanwhile, the champion and his companion are walking along and have reached the woodchip gallops. Sea The Stars is having an easy day; his immediate future is about to be decided. The announcement is only hours away, and most of his supporters are hoping it will be agreed that the Cape Cross colt has given so much, it would be wrong to ask for more. It was Oxx’s decision: “I couldn’t put him through another month of hard work. He has done everything; it was the toughest test of a three-year-old. I think everyone with an interest or understanding of racing knows what he has achieved.”

No one could have managed – and minded – this mercurial genius better than Oxx, who glances over at the horse and says: “He’s perfect, the perfect racing machine. He is the point to which thoroughbred breeding after 300 years has arrived.”

Oxx admits he loves watching his horses, particularly this horse, training. “It’s always been so easy for him, with him, anything he’s been asked to do, he’s done it and it’s never been too much for him.”

Oxx’s fond expression says it all; his charge is about to move on to a stud career. A six-month campaign has achieved an incredible result of six Group 1 wins secured by a colt intelligent enough not to try harder than he needed to. Of all his qualities: speed, acceleration, consistency, temperament, enthusiasm, presence, the one that is impossible to overlook is his deliberate authority – there is nothing frenzied about Sea The Stars, either in his nature or his career. The elegant walk gives way to a trot: “He moves like a dressage horse, doesn’t he?” says Oxx, whose pleasure in the horse is so human and typical of him.

There is no rhetoric, no big talk. “A horse like this comes along every 30 years or so,” he says, and won’t denounce the heroes of the past such as Sea Bird, Nijinsky, Mill Reef, Brigadier Gerard, Dancing Brave. We keep returning to the subject of how this colt kept his head and won the Arc, whereas Nijinsky had not had the mental strength to win at Longchamp.

“I’m not surprised that happened to Nijinsky. He was highly strung and it was difficult, it is difficult,” says Oxx. “The French do things differently, the security is very lax at Longchamp. Too many people have access to the stable area. That would never happen in Ireland or England. People just about camped out at our fellow’s stable, there was no privacy, always some one coming and going – another horse would have become very distressed. He’s . . .” – for a minute it seems Oxx might be about to say he is “wonderful”, “special”, “great”, but instead says: “he dealt with it all, the pressure, the hype, the expectation.”

If the world is in awe of this confident colt, so too is his trainer, who prepared him so well and admits to being emotional about him. “How could I not be about a one in a lifetime horse like him? He’s caused many tears to be shed, my own included.”

Sea The Stars sets off on a seven-furlong canter. The chestnut gelding, a good horse in his day, is calm enough to stand and wait. “He’s experienced and very good with the young horses.” Sea The Stars eases into view, and the rider on his back can’t stop smiling. Exercise over, the champion and his companion saunter back to the yard and we continue our tour of the Curragh.

JOHN OXX WAS always going to train race horses. His father, also John, was a successful trainer and won eight Irish classic races. Among his finest horses were the great mare Lynchris, who won the Irish Oakes and Irish St Leger, and Arctic Storm, who was second in the inaugural Irish Sweepstakes Derby in 1962. “My parents worked hard at training and also bred horses – I don’t do any breeding. Their life was the one I knew and for my father and, then me coming along, it was a golden age of Irish racing. There were some great horses and some great trainers – particularly during the 1960s with Vincent O’Brien, Paddy Prendergast, Seamus McGrath and my father.”

John Oxx senior was from Dunboyne, Co Meath, and moved to the Curragh, establishing Currabeg Stables in 1950 – the year his son, the future trainer, was born. “We’ve extended the yard over the years and my wife and I built our house here.”

Oxx and his wife Caitríona have three children. His elder sister becomes something of a silent presence during the interview. She is pursuing the origins of the family name, which may be English or Viking. “We’re trying to find out the origins of the name, you could say, we’re still working on it.” He went to Clongowes Wood College. “From an early age, my parents advised me to do veterinary. It was a good choice for me. I have never practised. It’s funny though, people these days are better educated and would know a lot more about general equine medical care than they did in my father’s time.” Oxx has always based his training programmes around health: “It’s simple; if a horse is unwell, he will not only be unable to perform; he won’t be able to train properly.” Oxx introduced regular blood testing and scoping – monitoring the respiratory system – into his yard’s weekly regime. “We are very careful about sourcing good hay, using dust-free bedding and avoiding potential infection.”

What was it like, working with his father? “Oh, he was a dreamer; it was good, very interesting. We were aiming for the same thing. We had some fantastic rows but it always settled down. Our clashes were the usual – impetuous youth questioning experience and patience. Experience and patience always won. I took over the licence in 1979, 30 years ago.” He seems slightly shocked. “Ireland was changing, and so was our yard. Many of my father’s owners had belonged to the Anglo-Irish set and were dying out.” That same year he had his first winner. “The horse was called Orchestra, and was owned by Lord Donoughmore, he would have been one of the last of my father’s owners.” A few months after his father’s death, in 1987, Oxx won his first classic, the Irish St Leger with the filly Eurobird.

Over the years he has had many great horses such as Alamshar, Azamour, Kastoria and, of course, Sinndar – all owned by the Aga Khan, for whom he began training in 1988, and the magnificent Ridgewood Pearl by Native Ridge. “She was my first big horse, the one that really got us going; she was a tough, strong, masculine horse and won four Group 1 races in four countries,” including the 1995 Breeder’s Cup. The Cartier Horse of the Year in 1995, she was the highest rated three-year-old filly of 1995. Retired to stud the following year, she died five years later at nine while foaling.

Oxx’s birthday is Bastille Day. No wonder he has won the Prix de l’Arc twice – it was fated. He smiles at this, deciding that such a birth date makes him French. How different were the two experiences? “The first time it was a lot quieter, we knew we had a good horse and were confident he could win, it was an unbelievable day [Sinndar had won the Epsom Derby and the Irish Derby]. This time it was different. The expectation mounted over the months. So when we arrived in Paris, it was very tense. People wanted Sea The Stars to win.”

Back in his stable, the colt seems pleased to see visitors. When you stand in close to him you notice his size. Again, he drops his nose into my hands. His winter coat is coming through now. He has a baby face and it will be fascinating to see the stallion he will mature into. Oxx says of Sinndar, who is now at stud in France, “he was as quiet – but not as inquisitive. He would turn his back to the stable door and nod off. This fellow, [Sea The Stars] is more interested in everything.” The breeders will be queuing up for his temperament as much as everything else.

It is a great story. And one with a heroine, the colt’s mother, Urban Sea, by Miswaki out of Allegretta. Foaled in Kentucky in 1989, she was purchased for the Tsui family at the Deauville yearling sale. She won the Arc in 1993 and is the second winning mare to produce an Arc winner, and one of only two mares to produce two Epsom Derby winners. She had a tough racing career of 18 races, travelling between Japan, the US and Europe and was retired after damaging a fetlock, becoming a remarkable brood mare whose 11 foals include Galileo, Black Sam Bellamy, My Typhoon and All Too Beautiful. She died on March 2nd this year after giving birth, at the age of 20, to another colt. The [Hong Kong-based] Tsui family want to preserve her legacy and Sea The Stars is the horse to do this.

SEA THE STARS was foaled at the National Stud in Co Kildare and spent his first 18 months there, before arriving at Oxx’s yard. “Ireland is a great place for breeding and raising horses. Irish breeders, in spite of everything, are still out there breeding horses despite all the risks,” says Oxx.

“The Tsui family kept Urban Sea at the National Stud. Horses are part of the Irish psyche; it’s our heritage, so is racing. The Irish know how to work with horses. I think it is a shame that more is not made of the €1 billion contribution racing and breeding make to the economy. Many of our owners are foreign; they are putting money into Ireland. About 90 per cent of my income comes from abroad, and we put all of that back into wages and overheads.” Sea The Stars, who earned almost €4.5 million in prize money, has bought immense pleasure and morale to Ireland. He could also prove a valuable economic asset by attracting high-class mares from abroad, especially were he to stand at the National Stud – where he would be assured privacy.

The current recession has hit the Irish horse industry. “Many Irish owners have cut back and for us, having a horse like this has helped to plug a few holes. All trainers are experiencing cutbacks and reduced numbers. Nobody is sure of exactly how many yearlings will come in. If you look at the contribution made to Ireland through racing in terms of employment, tourism, stallion nominations, training fees from abroad and blood stock sales, racing deserves to be applauded, not dismissed as something confined to developers, and don’t forget its cultural importance.”

ANYONE THIS involved in training international race horses has little spare time. Oxx enjoys reading, “but I seem to fall asleep after a couple of pages. I admire John McGahern’s work – he writes about an Ireland I knew; and I like music – Chopin, to jazz, to Dire Straits. I listen to everything.”

As a trainer, he seems to be a victim of his own success, as his colts and fillies seem to retire for breeding at the end of their three-year-old seasons. “Well, that’s the way it is. It is all about speed, the purity of it. For the thoroughbred horse, speed is the ultimate test. And then, the best ones go on to another life, breeding.”

This year’s yearlings are about to arrive and it is easy to guess what is uppermost in Oxx’s mind – the search for the next great horse.

BORN

In 1950 and raised on the Curragh, where he still lives. His father, also John, was also a successful trainer

THE TRIUMPHS

He has trained 37 Group 1 winners, but his most recent success came when Sea The Stars won the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe in famous style two weeks ago

THE FUTURE

Oxx decided this week that the colt should be retired at three years of age. The search will now be on now for the next great horse