Barry Connell on how he turned 'blank canvas' in Kildare into thriving horse yard
Daragh Nolan chatted with the Nurney-based trainer ahead of the 2026 Punchestown Festival about his lifetime in horse racing and peculiar route to horse-training success
Irish horse racing attracts all types but, despite being around the sport since he could walk, Barry Connell brings a truly unique perspective to horse racing. The South-Dublin man has checked all the boxes of obvious horse racing roles, but did so in a wholly unusual sequence of being an owner since the late 1980s, then a jockey for a decade after that and has now held a training license for just shy of six years.
Barry explained, “I'm 66 now so I've had a lifetime's experience in the industry. From being a spectator, owner, a rider for a good length of time and finally from being a trainer. So I can see the industry from a lot of different angles. When I was riding out, I had a horse in training with a lot of trainers in Ireland and England. So what I tried to do was to take the best ideas that I could from each of those trainers and incorporate it into the operation when we set up.”
Connell set up Boherbaun Stables in Nurney, a now state of the art horse-training facility which was purchased through German probate after the 101 year-old owner of the 45 acres passed away. The land was perfect for training horses and, having only been used as a holiday home by the owner, it was little more than a cottage and some out-buildings.
“I gave up riding in 2010. I was 50 at that stage and I never thought I'd replace the buzz of riding. At that stage, I had a good few horses in training spread around a number of trainers. And a couple of years later, we managed to buy the farm in Nurney, which initially, I was just going to do pre-training, but it was a blank canvas,” Barry recalled.
“We bought that and set about building a place from scratch. That has morphed into it being six years now in September since we got a license. What we've achieved in five and a half years has been fantastic. It's a small operation and we only have between 15 and 20 horses riding out, but we are trying to focus on quality. National Hunt Racing is hugely competitive, especially in Ireland.”
Those previously mentioned perspectives, which include going on to ride 34 winners after first getting on a horse at 30 years old, led the stockbroker turned trainer to develop his own philosophy when it came to training horses.
“We give the horses all the time they need. We're basically trying to make a career for the horse. It doesn't matter to us. I know that the kind of fashion nowadays is to try and run them as early as you can. They're even trying to run with three-year-olds now, but that's not for us,” Barry said.
“A big national hunt horse is still growing well into his fifth year. And if you want to make a career, it doesn't matter to us whether the horse has run. If they start at five, and we have some that started at five, like Enniskerry; He's won a couple of great races, €100,000 handicaps, and he's 12 now. He's still going strong.”
Mistakes made as an owner himself; buying horses from flat racing, point to point, and from abroad have all led to one conclusion for the Kildare-based trainer in terms of the damage that can be caused by premature competitive outings for National Hunt horses.
“The single biggest thing that I took away was that there was an incredible amount of wear and tear on younger horses that had been raced at an early age,” he said. “Some people can make it work, and it doesn't apply across the board, but typically what happens is that the horses don't stand up to a long-term racing career.
“I've seen it first hand since I've been training now, going around with the vets, looking at scans, looking at x-rays on some of the horses that we had at the start. And the wear and tear on their joints, on their ligaments, their tendons, their back. That's just the physical side of things too, if the horse is not comfortable in his body, then he's going to end up with multiple problems.”
The plan is clear in Boherbaun and has remained so throughout its short life span. Barry's set-up in Nurney is almost entirely populated with locals, many of whom previously worked for the late Dessie Hughes, and he hailed their expertise for ensuring that the programme of giving horses the time that they need is carried out to perfection.
It is a strategy that has bore fruit too with Barry's beloved Marine Nationale getting him his first Grade 1 winner in the 2022 Royal Bond Novice Hurdle at Fairyhouse.
“That day was incredible for me. We focus on trying to have a limited number of good horses and to get Marine Nationale (was brilliant). We actually got him during COVID so he’s been with us since the start. We bought him from one of the point-to-point trainers, Sam Carling and he couldn’t run him that year because COVID had stopped the point-to-points,” Barry recalled.
“He's turned out to be a superstar. We've had him through our system from an early stage and the same with our other Grade 1 winners. We have got a horse called Goodland too and he ended up winning a Grade 1 at the Dublin Racing Festival.”
The success of Marine Nationale dovetails beautifully with the forthcoming Punchestown Festival as Bowerbaun's star jumper is heading back to defend his Champion Chase title, which was won a month after also taking the Queen Mother at Cheltenham in 2025. Marine missed Cheltenham this year but the trainer clarified that the setback was minor, calling it “bad timing” and confirmed that he will be ready for Punchestown.
Barry concluded, “We have three entries in Grade 1's (at Punchestown). We have Marine Nationale in the Champion Chase, we have William Munny in the Champion Hurdle and we've Eachtotheirown in the Champion Novice Hurdle. He ran in the Supreme and he'd won his previous two races before he ran the Supreme, but it didn't go much of a gallop and he was way too keen and he just ended up running no race. So I'm hoping he'll run a much better race.
“Marine won the race last year and I think there's only six horses in recent history who have done the double. He’s run three times at Punchestown and he has won three times. He won his bumper there, won his maiden hurl and he won the Champion Chase there, so he is unbeaten at Punchestown.”