‘We Were Relying On Karate Kid Winning – It Would Have Been Bleak If He Didn’t’

[Wandering Eyes]

Just over a month after being granted his trainer's licence, Colm Ryan lit up the Leopardstown Christmas festival when the not unfancied Karate Kid (Ire) (Spanish Moon) ran out a most impressive winner of the 2m4f bumper–a race that has been won by subsequent Grade 1 horses Carefully Selected (Ire), Appreciate It (Ire) and Fact To File (Ire) in recent times. 

This was the first time in six years where the powerful yards of Willie Mullins or Gordon Elliott weren't responsible for the winner of the race and Karate Kid will doubtless pique the interest of some of the bigger outfits when he goes under the hammer at the Cheltenham January Sale on Saturday. 

Karate Kid is owned by Ryan's close friend John Hayes, who actually held the licence when the horse made a promising start to his career to finish second in a Fairyhosue bumper back in October. From there, connections rolled the big dice by taking on the might of Mulllins and Elliott at Leopardstown and were rewarded ten fold for their bravery. 

And while Ryan acknowledges something of a flip-flopping of the market that sees potential suitors gravitate towards point-to-point graduates over bumper winners compared to what would have been the case a decade previously, the rookie handler remains optimistic that the gelding can make his value in the ring. 

Ryan, who is in his early 40s, explained, “There have been a good few calls but it made the most sense to bring him to the sales. The market does seem to be heavily biased towards point-to-pointers and we're not in that circle at the moment. Maybe if this was six or seven years ago, people would be knocking down the door for a Leopardstown bumper winner. But the market has been flipped on its head for whatever reason.”

He added, “What some of those point winners are doing is nothing related to what Karate Kid did at Leopardstown. A lot of them run in a point-to-point in November and then they aren't seen for 12 months. The other thing is the level of form they achieve. They are getting away with murder, really. Okay, they may be good horses but there's no real value to what they are doing–hacking around and quickening up from the second last. 

“Compare that to the three-year-old hurdles at Auteuil in April and you've 18 runners and fields spread out like the washing. It's just a different test altogether. There's various examples of horses winning a point-to-point and being put away for a year. They can't run for 12 months because they can't handle the system of any of those big yards. The likes of Karate Kid and the system that he's in, he'd go into Willie's, Henry's [de Bromhead] or Gordon's in the morning and slot in straight away. There's no doubt about that.”

Karate Kid was sourced for just £13,000 at the Goffs UK Spring Store Sale back in 2023. There were phone calls after that promising Fairyhouse debut but nothing materialised and he went on to deliver that memorable breakthrough victory on one of the biggest National Hunt stages of them all for Ryan. 

From the outside looking in, the decision to run Karate Kid in what is typically one of the hottest bumpers all winter looked ambitious at best. But it was one that was made easy given the form of the horse at home on the gallops, according to the handler. 

He said, “Three to four weeks out from the run, the decision became an easy one to make. It was just black and white as he was working so well. You talk about a young horse's ability but a lot of it is conjecture. This fella ran away fine on debut at Fairyhouse. It was a middle-of-the-road run. But sometimes these young horses can just improve and really start to roll and that's what he did after that run. They become really trainable and every day you do something with them they feel better. From the beginning of December, he was really flying and it was just a matter of hoping you weren't going to meet the second coming out of Willie's at Leopardstown. 

“Whether you are a singer, or an artist or whatever, the standard is unbelievable and the shape a good horse can itself into is phenomenal. Then you have other horses and you're persuading yourself all the time about what they might do. But the simplest thing about Karate Kid is that he took himself to Leopardstown. You didn't have to make any case for him. He did it himself. It was just clear-cut. People talk about galloping but it's nothing to do with galloping. It's a strong daily routine and the good ones will keep coming forward. I've no doubt that he's a good horse. Especially with how he came out of his race. We'd have had no problem going to the DRF [Dublin Racing Festival] with him–he was ridden out two days after the run because he was getting too fresh.”

Ryan may be a rookie on paper, with Karate Kid just the second horse he has run in his own name, but Leopardstown was far from his first rodeo. After enjoying initial success, he was almost lost to the game after a series of investments went awry. It was only after teaming up with fellow Limerick-based handler Richard O'Brien in 2019 where his spark was reignited and the stable sent out four bumper winners in that time, including Ryan's homebred and Springs A Girl (Ire) and Hayes's homebred Shanbally Kid (Ire). 

“It's only in the last couple of years where this whole thing has become something real,” he explained. “The other side of it is that it's almost a second act if you like. A lot of people my age will have established themselves in life whereas I am starting again. I got out of horses for a good period of time.

“Going back to the very beginning, there wouldn't have been any history of horses at home. My father just arrived home from the mart one day with a mare and sure we didn't have a clue what we were doing. We put her in foal anyway and put the progeny in training with Charles Byrnes. It was through that horse [Drive On (Ire)] that I got a job with Charles. I got a few quid together and I came home and put down a gallop.”

He added, “The first store horse I bought by myself was named Lismakeery (Ire) and he went and won a bumper and I got him sold to JP McManus but I didn't know what I was doing at the time. I went off and bought seven or eight horses with the money I got from that horse and the whole thing just went up in smoke. I just got out of the game for a while after that. I was out of it for no other reasons than inexperience and stupidity. I went farming for six or seven years and had an attitude that it didn't work out because I wasn't up to it. The reality was I just didn't have enough exposure or experience.”

He added, “I met Richard by chance. He had been calling into David O'Meara when he was based in the north of England and obviously Karl Burke, Kevin Ryan and Richard Fahey are based around there as well. This system of training that Richard brought back from his time over there was really invigorating. There was something really fresh about it and it really hit me. I would have been very blinkered and wouldn't have known anything other than the standard way of training horses and getting them fit–quite old-fashioned methods. This was back in 2019 and it created a completely new interest in racing for me.”

It was last year when Ryan decided it was time enough to stand on his own two feet. And while allergic to self praise, he acknowledges that the role he played in nurturing a number of young horses who went on and won races provided the confidence to apply for the trainers' course. And the management of Karate Kid has been a vindication of that leap of faith. 

He said, “You can't really go saying these things about yourself, but I had a bit of success over the past couple of years and started to think that this might be something I could be good at. Usually, when you are dealing with a small number of horses, you might get a result every few years. But in the past three or four years, the results have been a lot more regular. It felt like there was something solid happening.”

On the future, he added, “For the past five or six years, I have just been going non-stop 24/7. Now, I have got a good few quid out of horses but I found myself in a position where I was going to Leopardstown with Karate Kid and everything was revolving around how he ran. We were relying on him running well if not winning. That's a really bad position to find yourself in and thankfully he ran well and he looks a selling prospect now. But irrespective of the sale, if he didn't perform, it would have been fairly bleak stuff. I am at a point in my life now where I'd like this to work. I am not married and I don't have any kids. I have a huge interest in training but I'm still not in a position where things are normal-you're relying on a big result every year. The dream would be to have a batch of young horses coming through every year and to achieve a semblance of normality.”

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