Just over a month after receiving his trainer's license, Colm Ryan caused a stir at the Leopardstown Christmas Festival when the not-unheralded Karate Kid (Ire) (Spanish Moon) emerged as an impressive winner in the 2m4f Bumper – a race run by The following Class 1 horses have recently been carefully selected (Ire), appreciation (Ire) and fact to document (Ire).
This was the first time in six years that the powerful yards of Willie Mullins or Gordon Elliott were not responsible for the race winner and Karate Kid will no doubt attract interest from some of the bigger teams when he goes under the hammer at the Cheltenham January Sale on Saturday.
Karate Kid is owned by Ryan's close friend John Hayes, who actually held the license when the horse made a promising start to his career, finishing second in a Fairyhosue race in October. From then on, the connections rolled the gigantic dice by taking on the might of Mulllins and Elliott at Leopardstown and were rewarded tenfold for their bravery.
And while Ryan acknowledges something of a shift in the market, with potential suitors focusing more on point-to-point graduates than top-tier winners compared to what would have been the case a decade earlier, the rookie remains Leaders are sanguine that the gelding can succeed based on his value in the ring.
Ryan, who is in his early 40s, explained: “There were a few calls but it made the most sense to take him along to sell. The market seems to be heavily biased towards point-to-pointers and we are not currently in that circle. If this had been six or seven years ago people might be beating down the door for a Leopardstown record winner. But the market has been turned upside down for some reason.”
He added: “What some of these point winners are doing has nothing to do with what Karate Kid did in Leopardstown. “Many of them run point-to-point in November and then aren't seen for 12 months. The other thing is the level of form they reach. They actually get away with murder. Okay, they may be good horses, but there's no real value in what they're doing – hacking around and getting faster from second to last.
“Compare that to the three-year-old hurdles at Auteuil in April and you have 18 runners and fields spread out like a ton. It's just a completely different test. There are several examples of horses that won a point-to-point race and were locked away for a year. They cannot run for 12 months because they cannot cope with the system of these enormous shipyards. People like Karate Kid and the system he's in would go to Willie's and Henry's [de Bromhead] or Gordon's in the morning and get in straight away. There is no doubt about that.”
Karate Kid was advertised for just £13,000 at the Goffs UK Spring Store Sale in 2023. There were calls after that promising Fairyhouse debut but nothing materialized and he went on to take that memorable breakthrough victory on one of the biggest National Hunt stages of them all for Ryan.
From the outside, the decision to host Karate Kid all winter long in one of the hottest locations seemed ambitious at best. According to the dog handler, this was basic considering how well the horse galloped.
He said: “Three to four weeks after the race the decision was basic for me. It was just black and white because he worked so well. They talk about the abilities of a newborn horse, but a lot of it is speculation. This guy got off well in his Fairyhouse debut. It was a midfield run. But sometimes these newborn horses can just step up and really get going, and that's exactly what he did after this run. They really become trainable and feel better every day you do something with them. It really took off from the beginning of December and I just hoped that the second offshoot of Willie's wouldn't be encountered in Leopardstown.
“Whether you’re a singer, an artist or whatever, the standard is incredible and the form a good horse can take is phenomenal. Then you have other horses and you're constantly thinking about what they could do. But the simplest thing about Karate Kid is that he himself went to Leopardstown. You didn't have to stand up for him. He did it himself. It was just clear. People talk about galloping, but it has nothing to do with galloping. It's a powerful everyday life and the good ones will always come out. I have no doubt that he is a good horse. Especially how he emerged from his race. We wouldn't have had a problem going to the DRF [Dublin Racing Festival] with him – he was ridden out two days after the race because he got too frigid.”
Ryan may be a newbie on paper, Karate Kid is only the second horse he has raced on his own behalf, but Leopardstown was far from his first rodeo. After initial success, he almost lost the game after a series of investments failed. It was only after teaming up with his Limerick-based handler Richard O'Brien in 2019 that his spark was rekindled and the stable sent four record winners in that time, including Ryan's home-bred Springs A Girl (Ire) and Hayes' home-bred Shanbally Kid (Ire). .
“It's only in the last few years that this whole thing has become something real,” he explained. “The other side of it is that it's almost a second act, if you will. Many people my age will have established themselves in life while I am starting over. I got away from horses for a good while.
“If I look back to the beginning, there would have been no history of horses at home. One day my father just came home from the market with a mare and we certainly had no idea what we were doing. We still got her to foal and had the offspring trained by Charles Byrnes. It was through this horse [Drive On (Ire)] that I got a job with Charles. I got a few pounds together, came home and galloped.”
He added: “The first shop horse I bought myself was called Lismakeery (Ire) and he won a bumper and I had him sold to JP McManus but I didn't know what I was doing at the time. “I went out and bought seven or eight horses with the money I got from that horse and the whole thing just went up in smoke. After that I dropped out of the game for a while. I got out for no reason other than inexperience and stupidity. I was in farming for six or seven years and had the attitude that it didn't work out because I wasn't up to it. The reality was that I just didn’t have enough exposure or experience.”
He added: “I met Richard by chance. He had called David O'Meara when he lived in the north of England and apparently Karl Burke, Kevin Ryan and Richard Fahey are also based there. This training system that Richard brought with him from his time there was really invigorating. There was something really fresh about it and it really touched me. I would have been very narrow-minded and would have known nothing other than the usual way of training horses and getting them fit – pretty old-fashioned methods. That was in 2019 and gave me a completely fresh interest in racing.”
It was last year when Ryan decided it was time to stand on his own two feet. And although he is allergic to self-praise, he admits that the role he played in raising a number of newborn horses to compete and win races gave him the confidence to apply for the trainer course. And directing Karate Kid is a confirmation of that leap of faith.
He said: “You can't really say these things about yourself, but I've had some success over the last few years and started to think this might be something I could be good at.” If you do it with a diminutive number of horses, there can usually be a result every few years. But over the last three or four years the results have been much more consistent. It felt like something solid was happening.”
On the future, he added: “For the last five or six years I have been on the road non-stop 24/7. Now I've made a few pounds from horses, but I found myself in a situation where I was taking Karate Kid to Leopardstown and it was all about his mileage. We relied on him to do well, if not win. That's a really bad starting point and fortunately it did well and now looks like it's going to sell. But regardless of the sale, it would have been pretty dismal if he hadn't performed. I'm at a point in my life now where I want this to work. I am not married and have no children. I'm very interested in training, but I'm still not able to do everything normally – you count on a gigantic result every year. The dream would be to have a group of newborn horses every year and achieve some semblance of normality.”
