PRENDERGAST FAMILY VALUES
Kevin’s had his fair share of wins, now Patrick wants day in the sun
IT HAS been a feature of Irish Champions Weekend that the wealth is spread in a manner that doesn’t happen so regularly at major jumps festivals.
At Leopardstown yesterday 86year-old Kevin Prendergast got his fair share when Madhmoon scooped the €88,500 first prize for winning the Group 2 KPMG Champions Juvenile Stakes.
His nephew Patrick Prendergast will be hoping to have his day in the sun when Skitter Scatter takes on a high-class field in the Moyglare Stud Stakes at the Curragh today and there will be few more popular victors if she does the honours, such is the trainer’s popularity.
She has an outstanding chance too, though Prendergast would have loved if the rain had stayed away. After all, her sire Scat Daddy was lightning on quick ground and his progeny have similar traits.
It was pleasing for connections though that this well-moving juvenile handled the yielding ground at the Curragh to win the Group 2 Debutante Stakes comfortably three weeks ago, accelerating well having travelled like a Rolls Royce. If she were housed in Ballydoyle, she would be favourite and represents good value as a result.
Apart from being one of life’s gentlemen, Prendergast is an outstanding trainer. He was reared to be so.
Aside from his uncle, his grandfather, Paddy ‘Darkie’ Prendergast was one of the greatest handlers Ireland ever produced. A winner of 17 Irish classics and four in Britain, he was the first Irish-based trainer to be British champion. He won three-in-a-row from 1963-65, to go with his six Irish titles.
Prendergast’s father, Paddy is known as Junior despite being 83. He is part of a select group of trainers that enjoyed success at Group 1 level on the flat and Grade 1 over jumps, despite tending to sell good horses to keep the business afloat.
It is a policy his son has pursued too since taking over the licence from his father at Melitta Lodge, having served his apprenticeship with Dermot Weld, Jim Bolger and Jean-Claude Rouget before working as an assistant to Ed Dunlop and Michael Stoute.
It can be frustrating though when the quality leaves the yard and as a result, you don’t have the firepower to go to war with. He recalls his mother often giving out to his father for missing out on so much glory but bills did not pay themselves. And Prendergast knows all about that, having almost been sunk during the recession.
‘I’d a great year in 2005, with Waterways winning the Marble Hill for a really good guy in Pearse Gately, and everything in the yard won,’ said Prendergast recently.
‘My clients were speculators, and I got left in an awful mess. I had a nice house in town that came from my savings from England and I’d to sell it, give it to the banks and move into the yard. I converted a few stables with a few quid I managed to keep.
‘You would have been angry enough at the time. I had certain clients that genuinely couldn’t pay me but I have no doubt a huge percentage of my old clients used the crash as an excuse to make no effort.’
There were some key supporters who kept him afloat and Rick Barnes of Grangecon Stud was one of the key ones. Barnes raced what he couldn’t sell and offloaded them once they had some form. Yet the likes of Coral Wave and Sugar Boy were Group 3 winners.
Coming off his best season ever in terms of winners and prize money, Prendergast got the current campaign off to a spectacular start, with doubles at Dundalk and Leopardstown in six days in April the highlight.
Skitter Scatter beating off allcomers today would make it a redletter term indeed, however, as it would provide the 43-year-old with a first Group 1 triumph and add €199,500 to his prize money.
‘My father always said to me “Good horses will win in spite of you”. If we have pedigrees coming from good studs, it’ll come.
‘People say “What do you look for in a horse?” and when all is said and done, pedigree is a great thing. If they’ve great pedigrees and they go to the track, they’re just doing what they’re born to do if they win. If horses come from nothing, they’re a fluke. It does happen but you are looking for lightning to strike if a horse has no pedigree. So if I’m picking something up at the sales, I’ll forgive them a few things in favour of pedigree because I won’t have the budget otherwise.
‘I’d find training a yard full of 45to-65-rated handicappers very frustrating. It’d drive you mad because when they do get through the ballots, it’s the day things are wrong half the time. I’d rather have a boutique hotel than a chain of hotels. And it’s not laziness, or a lack of ambition. I was an assistant trainer and there were 55 horses on a lot. I can see the merit in it but it was not something I wanted myself. I’d love to have 40 stakes horses here.’
Skitter Scatter is the stable star. She ticks the pedigree box but most importantly, possesses the gears.
‘She’s all guts and she makes training very easy because she’s very, very honest and sound,’ said Prendergast after the Debutante. ‘I’m so grateful that a small yard like ours has something like her.
‘Thank God Mrs Rogers [Sonia, owner] has turned down every phone call that she’s had. It’s lovely to have one like that and we know we’re keeping her.’