The Irish Grand National has been great to us, Kinturk Kalanisi has a good profile for the race says the Meath based trainer, Tom Gibney, one of the county’s smaller trainers who has won the national twice. he give his opinion about the big race later today

The race has been great talk for us, it’s been fantastic. But I wouldn’t mind missing it with Intense Raffles; I wouldn’t want to go there with him unless I thought he was absolutely firing on all cylinders. So, if we miss it with him, we miss it. I have another horse entered in it who I’d love to get into it as well. Kinturk Kalanisi, who might scrape in. Which he does at a weight of 10-7. 

He has a good profile for the race, but he’d be at the bottom of the handicap so he’s a bit out of it at the moment. It’d be touch and go whether he gets in or not. From our own point of view in a small yard, you’d love to have horses good enough to compete in some of these races. To get into them and compete in them is great and if we collect or feature, all the better. As far as more business or a financial change or anything, that didn’t really happen.

Our two Irish Grand National wins were completely different, but it was great to reward Simon Munir and Isaac Souede for their faith in me

Honestly, I couldn’t say for the simple reason that they were so different for such different reasons as well The first one was like a fairytale really, because literally, I think I had six horses on the go at the time. We’d have a couple of winners a year and a couple of horses that were good enough to win a race, any race! So, to go from there to winning the biggest handicap in the country was really one extreme to the other. So that was surreal.

Where the second time it wasn’t really. Having Simon Munir and Isaac Souede on board was a big deal in itself and it was great. The fact that it was a good horse in Intense Raffles, and it was working out really well, meant that it all just fell into place really nicely. We went there expecting things; we’d have been really disappointed coming home if we weren’t there or thereabouts last year. He had shown a level of ability, we knew he was well capable. Intense Raffles did very well in France when he started out, but just lost his way a little bit when he went chasing over there.

I don’t know about the secret or doing well there itself, to be honest. It’s been a lucky track for us actually. I have to say very lucky, not just the two Nationals. With certain trainers, you see their horses always perform particularly well at certain tracks for some strange reason. That definitely is the thing for us and Fairyhouse. It would absolutely be at the top of our pile. Our horses just seem to run well there for whatever reason that is. I actually can’t tell you why, but it just obviously suits the way we do things

Quietly, I suppose, would be the one word to describe how we kind of do things. Quietly sums it up. No shouting or bawling or no sticks, just get out there and get into a nice rhythm. The horses enjoy that, they enjoy that kind of peace and the softer approach. Maybe that’s the way to describe it. The no-sticks policy absolutely encourages trust between horse and rider.

Probably my father [is my mentor]. I grew up on a farm and we always had a couple of horses around the place. He taught me and my younger brother, Edmond, who competed for Ireland at the Olympics in 2004. The three-day event was the discipline he went for, and I went for the racing. So I’d say it’s mostly down to my father. We’re both happy with the decisions we took.

 Thanks to Tom Gibney’s thoughts,  for prices today at the national see attached link  horse racing odds