Tommy Carmody (right) seen here with Ronnie O'Leary & Brendan Sheridan (centre)© Photo Healy Racing
Tim Jones, racing manager to Andrew Tinkler, today explained the background to an interesting link-up that sees the prominent British-owner with his first Irish-based runners and also heralds the return to the training ranks of Tommy Carmody.
Jones said: "We've got three entered at Dundalk on Friday. They are trained by Tommy Carmody and he is working with Johnny Murtagh. We've got Vassaria, Rasputin and Miss Mediator entered on Friday.
"All have shown a level of form when they were trained over here in the UK. We decided to send them over to Ireland to run them at Dundalk to take advantage a little bit of the prize-money over there and see whether they could make a mark.
"They are Andrew's first Irish trained horses. They are the first runners we've had over there that were based there. Obviously Dubawi Gold was Andrew's first runner over there when he was second in the Guineas last year so he was the first runner but these are the first Irish trained horses.
"I don't think Andrew is Tommy's only owner but he's Andrew's only trainer. Tommy is now training out of Johnny Murtagh's yard and Johnny is working very closely with Tommy. There is obviously a good rapport, a good relationship between Johnny and Andrew over the last sort of twelve or eighteen months. Johnny obviously rode Sweet Lightning to win the Lincoln for Andrew last year and prior to that had been very helpful with a small team of horses that we had in Dubai last year.
"The tie-up between Tommy and Johnny was the reason for Andrew's sort of input into Tommy's set-up.
"There are six of Andrew's horses with Tommy at the moment. The other three are a horse called Royal Diamond. He's an older horse, he was with Jonjo O'Neill actually earlier in the year. He had a few runs over hurdles but he hasn't really taken to hurdling so we decided to send him over to Ireland with a view to running him at Dundalk as well.
"The two remaining ones are a gelding by Montjeu called Hartside. He had three runs for Sir Michael Stoute last year and a very nice unraced colt by Galileo called Ursa Major. We just felt he would benefit from being in Ireland as he would get going earlier than he might otherwise get going over here with a view to just sort of seeing where he fits in the big picture and we'll run him on the all-weather as well.
"That's the situation, it's a nice little project and really interesting for Andrew and for us and it'll be fun to see how it works out." (EM)
