Under The Radar: King savours new first in family affair

There was that day at Cork in the summer of 2013, the year that Connor King was crowned champion apprentice for the first time.  He rode the winner of the second race, Kiss The Stars, a three-year-old filly of Tom McCourt’s, hitting the front inside the final furlong and keeping on well to win nicely. 

The teenager from Kilbrin won the third race that day too, an apprentices’ handicap, on a horse of David Marnane’s, Almadaa, the 11/4 favourite, and he won the Listed Platinum Stakes on Jessica Harrington’s mare Royal Blue Star, delivered widest of all and latest of all to get up and spring a 20-1 surprise.  Then he won the penultimate race too on another horse of Tom McCourt’s, Horsewithnoname, just hung on in a head-bobber and got home by a short head. 

Four winners in a day, a 14,725-1 four-timer for the champion in-waiting. “Cork has always been good to me,” he says. 

If you started out from Kilbrin just after the first race, you’d get to Cork racecourse before the second.  King went back there last Sunday, not as a young 16-year-old jockey with a quiver full of rides, but a young, 27-year-old trainer with one arrow, Oscars Brother, a horse with a chance in the Listed novices’ hurdle. 

“We had the race in mind since the summer really,” he says.  “We were looking at those good staying novice hurdles.  We thought that they would suit our horse.” 

They fancied Oscars Brother, believing that he was very well going into the race, but you couldn’t know for sure.  You’re looking at the other trainers in the race, Willie Mullins, Gordon Elliott, and you’re taking them on.  It’s bananas.  How many winners have Mullins and Elliott trained, and you haven’t trained one yet? 

Connor’s brother Rory led Oscars Brother up, and his other brother Dan rode him. Connor himself didn’t watch much of the race.  He looked at the horses and he looked at the ground.  Rory filled him in on the bits that he was missing, but he struggled. 

“It’s so different when you’re riding them,” he says.  “As the trainer, you are powerless during the race. You’re busy in the lead up to it, you have prepared the horse, and then, even on the day, all that goes on before the race, getting the horse ready and getting the saddle.  But then, during the race, you can’t do anything.” 

If he had been watching, he would have seen Oscars Brother go clear with Paggane, a mare trained by Mullins.  Paggane mounted a challenge on the far side after the last, but Oscars Brother was always holding her, and he went on to win by two lengths.  Rory gave him a hug when the horse crossed the winning line, King’s first winner as a trainer. 

“It was like a dream come true.  Really.  I couldn’t believe it.,” he said. “All the planning and all the preparation.  My family were all there too, Dad bought the horse as a store, and with Dan riding him as well.  It was nearly too good to be true.” 

There isn’t a deep family connection with racing, but King’s father was always interested in horses and, hailing from Kilbrin, between Kanturk and Buttevant, beside Eugene O’Sullivan and Mick Winters and Adrian Maguire, you couldn’t help but have an interest in horses.  King started off in a riding school, Eden Hill riding school, and he went from there. 

He quickly made his mark on the pony racing circuit, his talent was noticed and very soon he was in demand.  He rode six winners one year at Dingle, the Cheltenham Festival of pony racing.  When he was 11, he started going in to Billy Lee’s parents in Ballingarry. 

“All I wanted to do was ride horses.  Any chance I got, any break I got from school.  I’d ride from early in the morning until late at night, it wasn’t like work, it was just what I wanted to do, it was all I wanted to do.” 

It was through his connection with Lee that he started going in to David Wachman when he was 15.  He won on his first ride on the racecourse, Precious Stone, a Galileo filly out of the Listed race winner Anna Karenina in an apprentices’ handicap at Leopardstown in October 2012. 

He kicked on quickly.  He was champion apprentice the following year, 2013, and he was champion apprentice again in 2015.  Colin Keane had been champion apprentice a year earlier. 

When Wachman finished up training, he went to Joseph O’Brien, and then to Johnny Murtagh. He was obviously hugely talented as a Flat jockey, but the length of his career as a Flat jockey was always going to be limited by his weight.  Nature dictates. 

“I thought that I was going to be able to do it for a while,” he says.  “But then I had a fall at Galway, I was out for three months, and I struggled after that.” 

In 2017, he went to Malton, spent some time there, with John Quinn and Tim Easterby mainly, then came back and worked with Joseph O’Brien. 

He says: “I started riding out a little bit for Paddy Twomey then too.  I had ridden a few winners for Paddy, and he just asked me if I would go in.  I enjoyed that lots, I learned an awful lot from Paddy.” 

 He hadn’t fully given up on riding though, so he continued to ride over Jumps, he went to Sam Curling’s and he rode a few winners Joe Murphy. 

“I was happy with that,” he says.  “Once I had ridden a few winners over jumps, I was happy to leave it at that.” 

His aim is to keep things small scale on the training side for now. 

“We have a very small team at the minute obviously,” he says.  “I’d love to build it up slowly.  A little bit every year.” 

And next up for Oscars Brother? 

“The handicapper has given him a mark of 130, we were expecting something like that,” he says. “We’ll have a look at something for him now in the next few weeks.  He stays well.  Maybe the Proudstown Hurdle at Navan.  We’ll see.”