Donn McClean catches up with Jessica and Kate Harrington who give him the full lowdown on their Flat team for the months ahead in 2025.
Jessica Harrington has been plying her trade among the top echelons of Irish trainers for decades.
A top-class three-day event rider, third on Amoy at Badminton in 1983, she initially made her mark as a trainer of racehorses in the National Hunt ranks, succeeding at the highest level with top-class horses like Dance Beat and Macs Joy and Jezki and Oscars Well and Bostons Angel and Our Duke and Supasundae and, of course, the peerless Moscow Flyer.
In 2017, she masterminded a treble that was without precedence when she trained Sizing John to win the Irish Gold Cup, the Cheltenham Gold Cup and the Punchestown Gold Cup, all in the space of two and a half months.
Her transition to the highest level on the Flat was seamless, registering her first Group 1 win, as she did, with Pathfork in the National Stakes in 2010, and she followed up with Alpha Centauri and Millisle and Albigna and Alpine Star and No Speak Alexander and Discoveries and Magical Lagoon.
Last year, ably assisted by a top-class team of people, headed up by her daughters Kate and Emma and by her son-in-law Richie Galway, she won the Champions Juvenile Stakes with Green Impact and she won the Beresford Stakes and the Futurity Trophy with Hotazhell.
Those two three-year-old colts spearhead a strong team of horses that she has assembled for 2025, as the season starts to gather pace now.
