A proven master of his craft
Oylegate trainer Bolger still going strong after 44 years
JIM BOLGER from Oylegate has been training racehorses since 1976, and from small beginnings he has created a wonderful set-up that enables him to control his top charges from birth to the winner’s enclosure, and then back to the breeding shed for the best of them.
He has carved out a remarkable and pretty unique niche in top flight racing.
He has accumulated almost 3,000 career winners, including many of the top races in Ireland, Britain and France, and at the age of 78 he looks like a fit man 20 years younger and shows no sign of slowing up any time soon
Jim was born to Watt and Katie, on Christmas Day 1941, one of eight children, with three other brothers and four sisters. Educated at Oylegate National School and Enniscorthy C.B.S., Jim later studied accountancy in Dublin.
He married Wexford town woman, Jackie, in 1965 and they had two daughters, Fiona and Una, who is married to Kevin Manning, Bolger’s stable jockey since 1993 and still going strong at 53 years of age. The Bolgers have three grandchildren: Clare and James Manning, and Liadan Bolger.
Jim was interested in show jumping as a young man and he tells how he sold his last show jumping horse for £13,000, at the time a decent amount of money.
He re-invested it in three racehorses and the die was cast, with four winners in the second half of 1976, his first year training.
The first of these was Peaceful Pleasure in a hurdle at Roscommon, ridden by Dessie Hughes (R.I.P.), later a top jumps trainer, just a couple of weeks after the disappointment of Wexford losing to Cork in the All-Ireland hurling final.
He had 14 horses at the start of the 1977 season and 22 wins at the end of it, and he was away on the merry-go-round.
Jim had his early stables in Dublin and used the Phoenix Park to gallop his horses until this facility was shut down to make way for Pope John Paul’s visit in 1979, and it was never allowed again!
A couple of years after his
Papal eviction (!), he made his final move to his current base at Glebe House, Coolcullen, a former Church of Ireland stronghold built by the Bishop of Ossory in 1760, and he has turned it into the fulcrum of a racing powerhouse.
He now employs over one hundred people in three state of the art establishments: Redmondstown Stud at Oylegate; the pre-training premises at stately Beechy House, Rathvilly; and the Glebe House Coolcullen racing stables, on the Carlow/Kilkenny border
In the early days he was still a dual-purpose trainer and he won quite a few good races over timber, including Erins Isle (1981) and Perfect Imposter (1991) in the Tattersalls Gold Cup; Nordic Surprise (1991) and Chirkpar (1992) in the Irish Champion Hurdle.
He gave Charlie Swan his first Cheltenham winner on Condor Pan in the December 1988 Bula Hurdle.
However, the flat was always going to be his main target, and he achieved an impressive success rate early on. In 1991 he was champion trainer with 126 winners, beating a record total that had stood for 70 years, and he had ten over jumps for good measure.
He says he was always been more keen on fillies because you might salvage something as a brood mare if they were not great on the track.
Bolger’s list of winning fillies is really impressive, including Give Thanks and Flame of Tara (with him from the start at Coolcullen and both champion three-yearolds); Park Appeal, Park Express, and the tough Alexander Goldrun, Group 1 winner in Ireland, Britain, Hong Kong and France, and the first-ever horse to win over €3 million in one season.
Then there were classic winning fillies too, such as Jet Ski Lady (50/1) in the English Oaks, Margarula and Give Thanks in the Irish; Finsceal Beo in the Irish and English 1,000 Guineas and the Prix Marcel Boussac in France.
But Jim also scores major successes with the colts. St. Jovite was second in the Epsom Derby but he reversed the result with Dr Devious by a whopping twelve lengths in a record time at the Curragh, and then went on to also win the King George against the older horses at Ascot.
Teofilio, his first major homebred winner whose classic year was cut short by injury, Epsom derby winner New Approach, and 2,000 Guineas winner Dawn Approach were all the champion two-year-olds in Europe, having swept all before them.
Trading Leather won him his second Irish Derby in 2013, and what a family occasion it was: bred and trained by Jim, running in the colours of Jackie, and ridden by their son-in-law, Kevin. The icing on the cake came when Jackie won the title as leading owner in Ireland that year.
Apart from training horses, Jim is also regarded as a great trainer of men, and a roll-call of racing stars have passed through his hands, such as trainers Willie Mullins, Aidan O’ Brien, David Wachman, Patrick Prendergast, Pat Martin, Paul Nolan, Colm Murphy, etc.
The list of jockeys who began with him is also impressive, including Tony McCoy, Paul Carberry, Seamie Heffernan, Paddy Brennan and Ted Durcan, and of course Kevin Manning and his current deputy, Ronan Whelan.
A strong feature of Bolger’s life is his love and support of Wexford as a county, and hurling and football as sports, which came from the great team of the 1950s when ‘hurling was the single most important thing in most peoples’ lives outside their homes’.
He also started off the annual Hurling for Cancer charity match with jockey Davy Russell, which has grown in popularity every year since 2012 and attracts a host of stars from G.A.A. and other sports, and from the racing and entertainment worlds, to Newbridge every year and has raised almost a million euros.
A final few words from Jim Bolger, racing and Wexfordman supreme: ‘I owe a lot to my late parents, my teachers, and even more to Jackie, Una and Fiona, who bring me to heel, and to my loyal and hard-working staff.
‘If there was one thing I’d really still like to do, that would be to emulate the English trainer Arthur Budgett, who famously bred, owned and trained two Derby winners!
‘Mind you, if I could see Wexford winning an All-Ireland in either football or hurling, then I’d be willing to postpone that for a year.’