InterviewEric McNamara
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'I had 60 horses, then the recession hit and I had eight - but we've been lucky'
Colm Greaves talks to the resurgent Limerick trainer prior to his Thyestes tilt
Colm GreavesFeatures writer
Eric McNamara (right): runs Donkey Years in the Thyestes Chase on ThursdayCredit: Patrick McCann
Mark Twain famously mused that “the coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco”. Clearly the great American humourist had never attended a race meeting on a bitterly cold afternoon in Ireland in the middle of January.
If it was warmth that you were seeking last Monday, then Punchestown was the last place you’d look.
Eric McNamara sent one runner to the meeting from his stables near Rathkeale in County Limerick, a journey of 200 kilometres and then the same again home through the frosty winter darkness.
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more inInterviews
- 'I put all my eggs in one basket and I had no-one when I left - I was just riding everywhere and anywhere'
- 'It was the best race I ever rode and I was very proud of it - but Sheikh Hamdan thought it was terrible!'
- Aidan O'Brien: 'The weirdest, strangest, most impossible things can happen in racing and in life'
- James Fanshawe: 'It's easy to go in your shell and grumble that things aren't fair - but you have to remember how well you've done'
- Ralph Beckett: 'That day changed our lives - everything that's happened since has gone back to that'