"We never let them go full speed here on
the farm," he says. "A lot of other consign-
ors are more into Quarter Horse training
methods: they breeze half a furlong, flat
out, and then pull them right up. That way,
I feel, you're not training a thoroughbred
to be a racehorse. So at the end of the day
I've just had to make a decision—and that
was to rest on my reputation, on our abili-
ty to develop racehorses. And to hope that
keeps people coming back to buy from us."
It can surely be no coincidence that both
Brennan and Woods were raised in the old
school by fathers who trained mostly mod-
erate animals, often steeplechasers, to be
patiently primed for the day that mattered.
Liam Brennan did just that for the Irish
gambler Barney Curley in 1975, when a
horse called Yellow Sam at a country track
landed a famous betting coup. And while
Paddy Woods did ride the greatest of all
steeplechasers, Arkle, in the mornings—
and even won a race on him once—his own
yard never operated at that kind of level.
Their sons come over as very different
from each other in mien and tone—Bren-
