Stories cling to Jim Bolger, one of the most interesting men ever to hold a trainer’s licence, and lots of racing folk have a favourite detail about him or his career. It might be the time, back in the 60s, when he sold a showjumper to a young Libyan army officer called Gaddafi. It might be that, long past retirement age, he keeps fit by doing press-ups each morning and once shamed a couple of hurlers, visiting his stable between Kilkenny and Carlow, by doing 80 of them while the athletes gave up before reaching 60.
It could be the time he told a teenage Tony McCoy he wasn’t tough enough to make a jump jockey because he had cried when he fell off and broke a leg on Bolger’s gallops. Or it could be one of Bolger’s successful clashes with racing officialdom, perhaps the time some stewards had to apologise after banning his apprentice for excessive use of the whip when in fact the rider had dropped his stick in the starting stalls.
But the most remarkable thing about the Wexford man is his career, establishing a top-class Flat racing stable from a standing start and largely with horses he bred himself. Now aged 73, he comes to Royal Ascot this coming week with what looks like the strongest team he has ever brought over, starting with Round Two in Tuesday’s Coventry Stakes, a fantastically impressive youngster who is already favourite for next year’s 2,000 Guineas.
Bolger says Round Two is the fastest juvenile he has had since Polonia, Europe’s champion sprinter in 1987. Then there is Pleascach, odds-on for Thursday’s Ribblesdale Stakes, and Lucida, second in the betting for the following day’s Coronation.
A patriot whose proudest moment was winning the Irish Derby with a horse carrying the colours of his wife, Jackie, Bolger has not always seemed exactly keen to talk up the qualities of English racing. But he cheerfully describes the significance of Royal Ascot: “Before we got the Champions Weekend here and the big weekend at Ascot in October, it was out on its own as the most significant racing week of the year. The two champions weekends have encroached on its territory somewhat but it’s certainly the big mid-season one and I would think any trainer would be happy to have a winner there.”
While he describes his achievements at the meeting as modest, he has found his way to the winner’s enclosure in most years since 2008, when Lush Lashes and Cuis Ghaire gave him a double on the Friday. Those fillies ended a 15-year dry spell for Bolger at Ascot, over a period when his fortunes had dipped, following death or desertion among his biggest owners.
He told his staff in 1993 that the business was in rebuilding mode. “We’ll be back in 2004,” he added in an example of the self-belief that has done so much for him. Nor was it misplaced, as 2004 was the year he won major races in France and Hong Kong, his first Group Ones outside Ireland for more than a decade.
How did he sustain himself through the lean years? “My life is not one-dimensional. As I was saying to Joseph O’Brien the other day, there’s more to life than horse racing.” O’Brien is the jockey whose struggles with weight have cost him his position as first rider to his father, Aidan.
“I’d be interested in most things that go on in the world,” Bolger continues, “since the days when Stalin was a big, bad boy. I’m interested in politics, particularly Irish politics. I follow hurling and football and I’m a part-time social worker.” Um, really? “With 110 staff, that’s inevitable.”
Many businesses have grown to that sort of size from an initial staff of three but few have depended so thoroughly on sustained good judgment by the proprietor. While other trainers can rely on regular payment of fees from sundry owners, Bolger has for years owned most of the horses he trains. The system works only for so long as those animals win prize money or can be sold for hefty sums. It is, as he has acknowledged, a high-wire act. No one in Britain or Ireland is even attempting anything similar on a comparable scale.
“I was never concerned that I wouldn’t be able to keep it going,” he says. “I used to keep figures in a diary. After six weeks, I was making a profit and I haven’t looked at it since.”
A second profit has come from the bookmakers, gambling being the only vice that the non-smoking, teetotal Bolger allows himself. “I made a profit from my betting every year from the age of 10 until last year, when I dropped a bit of money, and now I haven’t had a bet so far this year.”
And in a growling tone that makes you glad you’re not a bookie, he adds: “I’ll have to change that now, won’t I?”
