The Clare Champion Clare news, sport, entertainment and local notes
In the third instalment of our audio series preview the Limerick Racecourse Mr Binman Christmas Festival we hear from the trainer of the favourite for St Stephen’s Day’s big race.
Gavin Cromwell speaks to Dave Keena about the prospects of his exciting young chaser Gabynako.
Cromwell himself is an interesting character whose background in the sport is literally at grassroots level – he is a farrier by trade.
In that discipline he has shod Gold Cup and Grand National winning horses along with an Olympic Gold Medalist.
His farrier skills are a passion and a trade that he is still very much in demand for by some of the biggest operations in the sport.
Nowadays however his reputation as a trainer outstrips that and he runs one of the shrewdest operations in the sport.
He has good associations with Limerick Racecourse too, his Espoir D’Allen, that romped away with the 2019 Champion Hurdle at Cheltenham, won one of his prep races that season at Greenmount during the 2018 Christmas Racing Festival.
His Vanillier, of course, was a good second at Limerick last season before going on to win the Albert Bartlett at Cheltenham.
