Paul Hennessy speaks about his preparation for Boylesports Bob ahead of this weekend's Irish Greyhound Derby
A general view of Shelbourne Park Photo: ©INPHO/Laszlo Geczo
BoyleSports Irish Greyhound Derby final trainer Paul Hennessy: My dogs use magnetic field therapy to recover from racing while eating porridge, yoghurt, honey and sardines for breakfast - and winning at the Cheltenham Festival in 2021 was like waking up as a kid at Disneyland Greyhound trainer
Paul Hennessy is going for glory in the Irish Greyhound Derby this weekend with his runner, BoyleSports Bob The Enniscorthy dog is part-owned by BoyleSports supremo John Boyle and is a 14/1 shot to win the Final at Shelbourne Park, a price his trainer believes is way too big.
Hennessy opened up on his training methods for his dogs, which includes a breakfast of porridge and sardines, an all-weather gallop for his runners and recovering after a massage in a box that produces a magnetic field to aid with blood flow Hennessy also has an all-weather gallop at his facility - which happens to be down the road from powerhouse racing trainer and good friend Willie Mullins’s Closutton yard
Hennessy also trains horses, with his most famous runner Heaven Help Us a winner of the Coral Cup at the Cheltenham Festival in 2021 and has his eyes set on the Champion Bumper at this year’s Festival
Hennessy was speaking to BoyleSports, who offer the latest Irish Greyhound Derby odds.
His preparation since last Saturday has been very good. We had a bit of a hiccup or two coming into the quarter final but we had the all clear for the final and we are expecting him to step up here in the Final.
He is a very good dog, he was second in the English Derby and that takes some doing. We kept him back for the Irish one and he has reached the final, he has a lot of ability so hopefully he will put his best paw forward and give it a good rattle.
The way we train them for a long competition like this is by maintaining them at about 80 or 90 per cent through the competition then, if you get to the business end, you have more to offer.
A dog can take a race a week, a horse can’t but dogs are more than capable so you balance out your in between exercises to cope with the stress of a race.
Keeping a dog ticking over from week to week is no big deal and if you are working at 80 per cent, you're not pushing them to the limits in between, the races bring them forward.
He has lots of natural ability. It really comes down to the ability of the dog and not the man behind the scenes, that’s the way it works.
We have an all-weather gallop for the dogs. I call them through the whistle, some might use a drag and a lure but on those you’re asking them to work at full intensity. We don’t, we work them easier for longer which is by whistling them. Most of the dogs come up at 80 per cent effort and I like that, leaving the rest for the race.
After races and in recovery, we massage the dogs and then we have these things called Porta Mags, you pop them in there and it creates a magnetic field which improves their blood flow while they are relaxing.
It creates the field in a small area, increases the blood flow in their muscles and it is very nice for them.
We just call it putting them in the box! It’s a training aid, it just relaxes them really well and if there are any niggles it helps heal them, it is also a really good relaxation for them.
This goes alongside taking them for walks and putting them on the gallops.
In fairness, you do have radio’s on in the kennels too. The idea of music is that if anything is going on around the yard, it is not all silence and then they start barking if they hear something, the music just keeps some sort of racket going on for them when they are in the kennels.
You wouldn’t feed them the way I feed myself - with takeaways and snack boxes! They are on a racing diet - in the morning they start off with porridge, yoghurt, honey and sardines. The porridge is brilliant as it is a slow release of energy - if you get up in the morning and have a bowl of cornflakes at 7am then you’ll be hungry again by 11am, eat porridge and you won’t. It is a slow release, not a huge burst, then it lasts throughout the day.
I would eat the sardines too! You can have them in ketchup or sunflower oil - there are plenty of benefits for them!
In the evening they will have some brown bread as a base, and then add meat or chicken and vegetables with a broth for flavouring as well.
It’s like looking after a human athlete and that’s what they are - athletes. You treat them as such, it is about keeping them fit and the fitter they are. The better they are, it is very much the same as human athletes.
You can overdo it by over feeding them of course but we have our own way of doing it, we have been doing this for 40 years. There are loads of different ways, when we started training we had a different way to the older generation and that worked for them but this works for us.
I have won it [the Irish Greyhound Derby] before and placed in plenty of times as well. It is wonderful for the guys that own this dog, John Boyle being one of them. He owns half the dog with another man and the two of them are having a great time. There is great excitement for them to have a dog as good as this and they are enjoying the spin.
He’s a friend and at the end of the day I train the dog, that’s as far as it goes. We have been at this for a long time so having the good ones give you such a buzz. It is lovely to have one in the final of the Derby, hopefully he can deliver on that.
I think he is a big price, I can’t understand the price. The favourite has been brilliant all the way through and he has brilliant training, nine times out of ten he’ll be out and gone but BoyleSports Bob is not far behind him in my opinion and I want to coax a bit more out of him.
The dog will deliver on the night, I think he is way overpriced. My job is to get him to give his best performance of the competition next Saturday night and that is what I intend to do.
We went over for a maiden hurdle with Heaven Help Us on a whim and that was crazy winning that, and then we went back, was seventh in the Supreme then won the Coral Cup the following year - these sort of things don’t happen for a greyhound trainer with a horse he bred himself. It was like waking up in Disneyland for her to have done that.
The Irish Greyhound Derby is our day job, Heaven Help Us winning at Cheltenham, I have no words to describe it. You wouldn’t try and compare the two as one is your livelihood and the horses are just something that happened that went off the richter scale completely for us to have a Festival winner.
It was a one-off, Cheltenham. Anyone who has experienced it - has a life of its own. It has its own identity. When I took her over for the first time, when she was walking down past the stands, the hairs stood up on the back of my neck. I have been watching it since I was a kid, even to have her walking down the track I’d have gladly put her back in the box and drop her home, let alone let her run and then to win, that was absolutely amazing and I couldn’t believe it - I don’t think anyone else could either.
Willie Mullins is a very good friend of mine and my neighbour too in Gowran, about 70 miles outside of Dublin. He rang me the other day and the way I answered the phone was “Willie, are you looking for some advice?” I’m about 10 minutes from his yard. I went to ask him a question about a horse the other day and halfway through he said “no. ”I said you haven’t answered the question and he replied “if you haven’t asked it already then the answer is no.” They are absolutely awesome down there.
Training horses and dogs can be quite similar. It is the same, it is about getting them healthy. There is no great mystique about it. It’s as simple as that really.
If you take a person that is sitting around and started doing fitness, then they will get quicker and better but then you can develop for long distances, short distances, it might be different in terms of training methods but there’s no mystique, it’s just keeping them all fit.
