The Grade One winner I’ll Sort That once changed hands for only €3,500 and that’s added to Declan Queally finding himself filling a plucky underdog role in the media build-up to Cheltenham. Ultimately, such a position only underlines how much the festival is dominated by the big guns.
Although Declan Queally snr is the licence holder at their Co Waterford yard, it is his son of the same name who’s become the driving force of an operation going places in a hurry, and in just a few years sits almost inside the top 10 of Ireland’s trainers’ championship.
There have been 24 winners and €373,000 in prize money at home this season, leaving high-profile names such as Charles Byrnes and Paul Nolan in their wake. But it’s still hard not to at least a bit “little guy” about I’ll Sort That lining up in today’s Turners Novice Hurdle.
Queally himself will ride him, a 38-year-old amateur jockey and assistant trainer taking on the best professionals at the very highest level on the biggest stage of all.
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There’s that tiny purchase price too, and how all of it is at least a change from the usual domination by the game’s behemoth operations. Queally’s capacity for a snappy line helps as well.
After he and I’ll Sort That landed the first Grade One prize of 2026 at Naas in January, he memorably summed up the experience.
“For me this is like a Junior C player being allowed to play in an All-Ireland. I’d love to have played in an All-Ireland final, but I won’t get on the team! In this scenario I’m able to do it,” he said. “Going to the start I’ve Paul Townend on one side of me and Jack Kennedy on the other. I’m thinking ‘I’m not supposed to be here’. But I try to blend in!”
The rapid progress of the Queally yard generally, though, is conspicuous. His father rarely had more than a couple of winners a year during a lengthy training career. It was his son Tom who earned an indelible place in racing history as rider of the superb Frankel.
But his younger son’s decision to change the yard’s focus from selling into one preparing winners has paid off spectacularly.
“We’ve climbed up a lot in the last few years, since we got out of the selling game and started dealing more with syndicates. We’ve around 45 horses and it’s a nice number. We’re going well and hopefully down the pipeline we might expand more,” Queally Jnr said.
It’s been a winding road to the big time for Queally. When he was 15, he followed his older brother to England to work for the legendary gambler and trainer Barney Curley for a couple of summers. He was even involved in one of Curley’s famous “touches”, riding two of the three winners in a four-horse accumulator in 2010 only to get beaten on the fourth at odds of 1-3.
“He just laughed that evening and said that even though he had won £4 million, I had cost him £20 million!” Queally recalled.
Curley died in 2021 and his former protege now says: “He was a big part of myself and Tom’s lives. He was always there, to make a phone call and help make decisions when I was younger.
“When I went over at 15, he could see I was going to be too big to be a flat jockey. He spoke to my parents, and I went back to school. Then I took a year off after school, and he made sure I went to college then as well. He’d sign, seal and deliver on a decision.”
Queally graduated with an economics degree from University College Cork but didn’t pursue figures as a career. “I got into riding point-to-points and started training horses so that was that. I wouldn’t remember anything of it now to be honest. I know how to count money all right!”
Proof of that might have come in 2024 when reported betting industry losses of over €500,000 were sustained on a Queally-trained double at Limerick and Ballinrobe. Ladbrokes subsequently settled a €30 each way double at prices of 80-1 and 125-1 with Queally’s stable lad Dylan Phelan.
More recently, I’ll Sort That has been a remarkable success story and an advertisement for the yard. Beaten just twice in eight starts, he has more than repaid the tiny purchase price paid by English owner David Needham. His results have also more than vindicated his trainer’s readiness to take on the massive operations. In that, I’ll Sort That really is an underdog story.
“I did a Cheltenham preview in the Tower Hotel in Waterford and when his name was brought up the whole place started cheering. I do feel like I’ve the county behind me, and to a degree, with the way things are with the bigger stables dominating, I think I’ll have a lot of the country behind me too.
“Irish racing likes when the smaller stables are able to compete against the bigger stables. Not that there’s anything wrong with Willie or Gordon. But Irish people do like an underdog,” he says.
In this context it’s a role that fits.
