The Jukebox Man: Owned by a Premier League Manager, Bred on a National League Budget

[Wandering Eyes]

This time next week, County Waterford native Paul Cunningham will know whether he's the proud breeder of a Cheltenham Gold Cup winner. If he is, then National Hunt racing's blue riband will have delivered another rags-to-riches story to rival classics of the genre given to us in years past.

Okay, so The Jukebox Man isn't trained by a dairy farmer a la 1990 winner Norton's Coin, nor will bookmakers be offering odds of 100/1 when the eight-year-old faces the starter at Prestbury Park. Equally, Ben Pauling, the trainer of The Jukebox Man, is blessed with far more horses in his care than the dozen or so housed by the Bradstocks when stable star Coneygree brought the ultimate prize back to Wantage in 2015.

The one thing that The Jukebox Man does share in common with that pair of Gold Cup greats, however, is his humble origin story. Owned by former Premier League manager Harry Redknapp he might now be, but, make no mistake, this was a horse bred on a National League budget.

“I only have a couple of acres here and somebody said to me there a while back, 'Do you realise that you could actually have bred the winner of the Gold Cup, from only one broodmare, on probably the smallest stud farm in Ireland?'” says Cunningham to give a flavour of The Jukebox Man's unlikely path to stardom, starting at River Tay Stables in Lemybrien.

“We bought the couple of acres here back in 2005. We've always had a few ponies and cobs, but My Twist was actually my first broodmare,” he continues. “She was in the yard at Woodhouse Stud where I was working at the time for Kieran Cotter. I was always a racing man before that and that was the first stud that I'd worked in. She was getting on a bit and I decided to take a chance on her. Kieran is a very decent man and that was it. We did a deal and that was how I ended up with her.”

If you hadn't guessed it already, the Flemensfirth mare My Twist would turn out to be the dam of The Jukebox Man, the sort of horse where you could spend a lifetime in breeding and not manage to produce anything with ability remotely close to his.

As Cunningham's luck would have it, he stumbled on the jackpot relatively early on in that journey, not that he had such grand ambitions when My Twist made the short hop to The Beeches Stud to be covered by Ask in the spring of 2017. Like any National League manager operating in the transfer window, Cunningham concedes that he wasn't exactly spoilt for choice given the budget that he had to work with at the time.

“We had a choice of the local stallions and Ask was by Sadler's Wells and breeding good stock at the time. It was a big call on what stallion to go to because I wouldn't be a big earner – you have to go with your budget,” Cunningham says of the economic pressures that he had to navigate, before fate then dealt a savage blow to The Jukebox Man's prospects of earning his breeder a decent return when he was offered as a foal at the Goffs December National Hunt Sale.

“Ask had gone out of the country in October and that was it – nobody wanted to know the sire after that,” Cunningham adds. “It's the cruel way of the sales and that's just the way it is, unfortunately.”

Described as “an unmercifully big foal”, The Jukebox Man and his dam had spent the summer leading up to his sales date in the company of another mare and foal duo, but in their case of the pony variety. Isabelle, his “partner in crime”, is reported to have gone on to great things in her own right as the winner of multiple hunter trials.

It's a time that Cunningham remembers fondly, albeit The Jukebox Man did provide his fair share of headaches from day one, having been born “fairly crooked”.

“His knees were just about touching off each other, but John Halpin, who has been my farrier here for 20 years, did a fantastic job on him,” Cunningham explains. “If John didn't keep on top of him at the time, the horse probably would have had to be put to sleep. He did fantastic work on him from a very young age.

“His legs were fairly correct going to the sales and that wasn't his problem on the day. The problem on the day was that he was by Ask. I had the legs walked off the foal up there, just to see if I could get somebody to look at him, because he was such a fine beast of an animal. But nobody pulled him out and nobody wanted to know him because of his sire. It was as simple as that. They didn't even get to see his front legs!”

The one person at that stage brave enough to take a chance on the strapping colt was John Phelan, who struck the winning bid of just €3,000 for the would-be Gold Cup contender.

“He sold for €3,000 and I was glad to get it at the time,” Cunningham adds. “We had a reserve of €7,500 on him and nobody was coming near me. I dropped it down to €5,000 and there was still nobody. In the end, I dropped it down to €3,000 and decided that, if I don't get that for him, I'd bring him home because he was such a fine foal. But, thankfully, John Phelan put his hand up.”

The next time that Cunningham saw The Jukebox Man in the flesh was in November 2022 when the then-four-year-old easily won his point-to-point at Turtulla for Mary Doyle. A couple of weeks later, he was bought by Tessa Greatrex of Highflyer Bloodstock for £70,000 at the Goffs UK Tingle Creek Sale, before embarking on a career under Rules for Pauling and Redknapp early the following year.

The rest, as they say, is history, although even this feel-good story has brought with it the odd heartbreak along the way. See the Cheltenham Festival of two years ago when The Jukebox Man was beaten just a head in the Albert Bartlett Novices Hurdle, having looked home and hosed jumping the final flight.

“That was painful,” Cunningham remembers. “I was probably guilty of celebrating too soon. I couldn't see him being beaten after he jumped the last, but it just goes to show how immature he was and how much more development he had in him. I think he kind of stuck his head up in the air and got a bit overwhelmed with the crowd and everything.

“He's a fine, big animal now and he's twice the horse he was that day in Cheltenham. He's a way bigger, stronger beast altogether. They're a big family so they are and they take time.”

The improvement in The Jukebox Man was plain for all to see when we last saw him in competitive action at Kempton on Boxing Day. One of four horses locked together in the final stages of the King George VI Chase, he pulled out all the stops to get the verdict by a nose in arguably one of the most memorable National Hunt races of the modern era.

“Oh look, my heart was beating fairly hard, I can tell you,” Cunningham says of his emotions watching it. “It was a great race. He got a lovely clear run and, my god, he put in some exhibition of jumping. There are a couple of pictures of him standing well outside the wings.

“His jumping is exceptional and I think that that's going to stand to him in the Gold Cup, because the Gold Cup is all about jumping. If you get a horse that jumps well at every fence, you're gaining lengths all of the time and that can make the difference at the end of the race. If he jumps well on the day and makes no mistakes, I think myself he'll win it.”

Should The Jukebox Man justify that confidence next week, then Cunningham won't be there in person to see it happen, much preferring to watch the race on the TV at home or at the local pub. Wherever he is, the nerves will no doubt be palpable when the clock hits 4pm on Friday and The Jukebox Man, all being well, gets the opportunity to try and put his name alongside Norton's Coin and Coneygree on the roll of honour for the sport's ultimate prize.

For now, Cunningham claims to be keeping a lid on his emotions, whilst acknowledging the enormity of what he could be about to achieve with the horse christened 'Elliott' by the breeder and his wife, Colette, and three children, Keely, Pauli and Barry, when he arrived at River Tay Stables back in April 2018.

“I'm trying not to think about it because every year coming towards Cheltenham and these big days, there are always horses that drop out and it's happened to us before [when The Jukebox Man was ruled out of last year's Cheltenham Festiva]. You never know what can happen until they're there on the day,” says Cunningham.

“We're getting loads of texts and phone calls off people, wishing us well and everything. I'd say it will be next week now when the nerves will really kick in and I'll be getting up in the morning thinking about it. I try not to get too worked up about it until the day that's in it.”

He continues, “But it is overwhelming like. It's so exciting because we have pictures of him here as a foal at River Tay Stables. It's lovely to know that a horse of such calibre was born and bred here out of something so small. They were lean times as well and it hasn't really sunk in yet. It's just a massive thing to happen.”

Whatever happens at Cheltenham, the future looks bright at River Tay Stables, with Cunningham having started his own foaling business a couple of years ago after doing it on an ad hoc basis for many years before that. Another famous graduate of the operation is last month's National Spirit Hurdle winner Potters Charm (Valirann), who was born in the same box as The Jukebox Man when foaled by Cunningham on behalf of breeder Gerard Flynn.

As for Cunningham's own breeding interests, he reports that My Twist is sadly no longer with us, but her final foal, the unraced Zambezi Twist (Zambezi Sun), has stepped in as a companion to the various other equine residents of River Tay Stables, along with her two-year-old colt by Silas Marner.

Touch wood, Zambezi Twist, who is reportedly in foal to Mekhtaal, is in a position to continue the legacy of My Twist for many years to come, though her place for life with the Cummingham family is safe regardless.

“Zambezi Twist is a family pet,” Cunningham sums up. “I'd say if The Jukebox Man didn't amount to what he is, we might not have continued breeding with her because her pedigree wasn't that strong at the time. We probably would have just kept her as a family pet, because we've always had a few ponies and stuff like that. We would have kept her anyway because she was the last foal out of My Twist.

“My Twist was a really kind and quiet mare and The Jukebox Man was a carbon copy of her. I'm still pinching myself about the whole thing, really, and I'm just so lucky to have The Jukebox Man's half-sister here in the yard.”

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