ado mcguinness
Group 1 glory A Case For You’s Abbaye victory was a first success for trainer Ado McGuinness at the highest level, and the Irishman is now chasing Grade 1 victory in the US
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T HAS BEEN A BUSY MEDIA STINT for Irish trainer Ado McGuinness – a google search of his name reveals zoom interviews, features and TV appearances most of which have taken place within the last month. He has become an object of this media scrutiny after his Lusk-based yard produced A Case Of You to win the Prix de l’Abbaye (G1) at ParisLongchamp on Arc day, giving McGuinness a first Group 1 victory in his training career. “We’re an overnight success after 20 years of training!” laughed McGuiness on our own zoom call. “It is the result of a lot of quite hard work and long graft. We’ve gathered together a nice team of horses now, and we’ve been able to spend some nice money and have invested quite wisely in some horses. “It doesn’t always work out when you invest in horses, but thank god it’s worked out, we’ve got new guys in and it’s going ok for us.” Over the past four or five years, McGuinness, alongside his cousin and assistant trainer Stephen Thorne, has bought a lot of horses in training, mainly at public auction at the Tattersalls and Goffs Autumn HIT sales, and at the Tattersalls July HIT Sale. It has become a lucrative source of winners for the team, and good ones, too. However, A Case Of You in a slightly different tact, was bought privately from Irish producer John McConnell. He had run the horse three times for himself – after a first time out third in a maiden at Bellewstown, the colt, a son of Hot Streak, broke his duck over 7f last September at Dundalk and then followed up in the Anglesey Stakes (G3) at The Curragh – the race a frequent precursor of three-year-old talent. The victory gave McConnell his own first Group race success. Post-race the trainer admitted that he wanted to
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