In sporting terms they are poles apart, but when it comes to winning horse races and football matches the ingredients for success are remarkably similar, according to Dermot Weld.
The Irish champion trainer can lay claim to at least a modicum of insight, given his close friendship with ex-Manchester United boss Alex Ferguson.
“I’ve known Sir Alex for a long time,” Weld tells CNN from Rosewell House near the Curragh, Ireland’s historic home of flat racing.
“We’ve had many discussions about the similarities of training racehorses and managing football teams, and no one’s better at knowing their players than Sir Alex Ferguson.”
The Scot might be famous for giving underperforming stars the “hairdryer treatment” on occasions, but he was also a master tactician routinely orchestrating match-winning performances during his 26-year reign at Old Trafford.
Ferguson, an avid horse racing fan, penned the foreword to Weld’s 2009 autobiography “Vintage Crop: Against All Odds,” offering some sage advice that could be equally be applied to his own footballing philosophy.
“For me, he wrote about knowing your horses and knowing their weaknesses so that can become a strength,” Weld explains. “So it’s not always the best horse that might win a race but the right horse for that race.”
On Sunday, Weld hopes his Fergie-esque Midas touch strikes once again with the Aga Khan-owned Harzand in the 95th running of the prestigious Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe.
It would be the latest twist in a colorful life that has even seen him played by the Irish actor Brendan Gleeson in The Cup, Gleeson better known for playing Alastor “Mad-Eye” Moody in the Harry Potter franchise among others.
Much like Ferguson, who won 13 Premier League titles, two Champions League crowns and 38 trophies in total at United, Weld is no stranger to silverware having trained more than 4,000 horses already during an illustrious career that shows few signs of diminishing.
Trailblazing trainer
The 68-year-old has won virtually every Irish race of repute — some many times over, including the Irish Derby (three wins) and the Irish St Leger (seven). But it is arguably his victories on foreign shores that make him stand out.
Weld is a liker of firsts, a trainer keen on being a trailblazer for his sport. He raced in Asia long before such a move was fashionable, winning the inaugural Hong Kong Mile with Additional Risk in 1991.
He did the same with the Melbourne Cup, becoming the first foreign trainer to win the “race that stops a nation” in 1993 with Vintage Crop when critics said it was impossible.
He is also the first and still only European trainer to win the Belmont Stakes, part one of the Triple Crown in the United States, a feat he achieved with Go and Go in 1990.
Weld has won with every horse imaginable from sprinters to stayers, and unlike many of his peers in flat racing has also enjoyed a myriad of winners over the fences too. There can be few, if any, more versatile trainers currently in the business across the globe.
The Arc is one of the few major racing scalps to have eluded him yet but, in Harzand, he has a golden opportunity to break his duck.
“You always dream to have a horse good enough to win the Arc,” he says of Europe’s richest horse race, with a purse of $5.6 million.
Already a groundbreaking first has been ticked off this season with a maiden victory at the UK’s Epsom Derby with the Pat Smullen-ridden Harzand, which is bidding to emulate the feat of Golden Horn in sealing the Derby-Arc double in one season just 12 months ago.
But the build-up has not been without its issues, the horse suffering a V-shaped cut during the Irish Champion Stakes earlier this month but Weld is confident he has recovered in time to race well at Chantilly racecourse — the Arc’s traditional home at Longchamp, Paris is currently undergoing refurbishment.
“He should be right,” Weld says, “and he’s certainly capable of winning the Arc but it’s a very tough race.”
Vet-eran performer
Of Harzand’s well being, Weld should be well versed. Long before he was training horses he qualified as a vet, remarkably combining his studies with being crowned the leading amateur jockey in Ireland on three occasions.
“I was always interested in equine surgery,” he explains. “That’s what I would have gone into. Doing the riding and the course wasn’t easy. I had a great friend who’d go to the lectures, pass on the notes and then often drive me to the race meetings. Then I’d study until midnight that night.”
He had brief stints working in the US and Australia, where his conjoined interests in the Triple Crown races and the Melbourne Cup were born before working under his father Charlie, himself an established trainer.
What followed was Weld becoming arguably the most global trainer in the business starting with Hong Kong.
“There was Hong Kong and then the Belmont,” he says, “which is funny as I’m looking at a picture of Go and Go [the Belmont winner he trained] right now. I trained grade 1 winners across the States, and then I looked to Australia.
“People told me I was mad and it was impossible,” and so it proved on his first time of asking, quarantine and travel rules making the trip too complex in 1992 before he made it work the following year and traveled to Melbourne with Vintage Crop.
“I wanted to bring a horse 12,000 miles across the world and prove the world wrong,” he recalls of the decision. “We went and won, and everything’s changed since then. Nine years later I went back to prove it wasn’t a fluke and won again.”
The story of Media Puzzle, the 2002 winner, is the one that got the movie treatment, telling the story of Damien Oliver’s win on board and the previous tragic deaths of his jockey father and brother Jason, who lost his life just two weeks before the Melbourne Cup.
For Weld, it was an emotive race while the movie-making process some years later proved a fun experience.
“I had Brendan Gleeson follow me around for a couple of days which was fun,” he says. “And obviously he’s a fabulous actor. Like any film, there was a bit of poetic license but overall I think they did very well.”
Despite the drama of the win, he cannot pick it as a favorite. In fact, he finds it impossible to select a favorite win or favorite horse from over the years simply insisting that “I never got bored of winning and I’m always hungry for the next win.”
In football, there was Fergie time. Weld time has yet to become part of horse racing’s lexicon but the Irishman would dearly like it to finally be his time in Paris on Sunday.
