0'NEILL IS NOW READY TO ANWSER THE CALL

IT WAS the sort of thing you might once have seen down at the Saturday morning pictures.

Terminally ill millionaire, seeking to make his exit in a blaze of glory, takes on unknown rookie to start the fire.

To the embarrassment of 30-year-old first-season trainer Eoghan (pronounced Owen) O'Neill, the fiction never became fact.

In February, a red-top racing page exclusive revealed how 'Derby favourite' Aristotle had been bought and was to be moved from Aidan O'Brien's Ballydoyle stable to Machell Place, Newmarket, the yard from which O'Neill had been operating for five months.

O'Neill, who at that time had not saddled a winner, recalls the episode.

"I was driving back to Newmarket with my fiancee, Melissa, when my phone rang.

"The guy on the end said: 'Hi, Jonjo'. I said: 'You've got the wrong number, but I can get you Jonjo's number'. He said: 'This is fate. I'm looking for a racehorse trainer and you're obviously a racehorse trainer'. He then said that he was dying of cancer and wanted to enjoy the money he had earned, adding that he wanted to buy a horse to run in the Derby.

"I told him that the only horse I thought was buyable was Aristotle. He made inquiries and 'bought'

inquiries and 'bought' the horse for 7 million, with an extra million if the horse won the Derby, and he was to be trained by me. That is when the story broke in the press.

"I had to keep pinching myself and a couple of older guys in the yard said, 'why the hell is he sending this horse to you and not to Henry Cecil, or leaving it with Aidan O'Brien?'" Why, indeed?

When the rest of the Press corps got on the trail, the story was quickly knocked down as senseless falsehood - a hoax.

But you wouldn't tell a boot-polishing apprentice to convert a Cup Final penalty, and the strong element of being asked to run before he had left the training babywalker is not lost on O'Neill.

"I did hope that maybe he was a complete nutcase, has a fortune and, for some reason or another, has picked me out. But, in hindsight, it would have been far too much.

"The spotlight would have been on me straight away and I wouldn't have been ready for it."

The aim since has been a return to being written about for the more conventional reason of training winners, a job for which Dublin- born O'Neill has been well tailored.

Having learned to ride on his parents' County Kildare stud, he worked for Chantilly trainer Robert Trainer Sir

Collet before getting a 2:1 in economics and psychology at St Patrick's, Maynooth.

A more relevant education took the form of a six-month spell of freelance work-riding at Belmont Park and then two and a half years with Sir Mark Prescott.

"That is where I learned everything that I know. He was a fabulous teacher and I have the utmost respect for him as a racehorse trainer and as a man."

A three-year term as assistant with John Gosden followed before O'Neill set up on his own in September last year with eight horses. He now has 22.

Many of those are immature two-year-olds but O'Neill ended a run of near misses when Billy Bathwick won at Carlisle at the end of last month, and Mujalina gave him his first juvenile win at Southwell a week ago.

Rather than be frustrated by narrow defeats, O'Neill saw them as proof that he had learned something from his time with Prescott.

"With horses being beaten heads and necks, that shows I have been placing them well," O'Neill said. "I have been able to measure their ability Mark Prescott

right spots for them to be in the money.

O'Neill, who may run Jamila in tomorrow's Cherry Hinton Stakes at Newmarket, wants to convert drops of winners to a trickle, then a stream, but has firmly-held opinions on how many horses one person can deal with.

He said: "You have got to keep your numbers to a manageable level. You can't train any more than 60.

"They are like school kids. When the yearlings come into the yard, you have got to break them, and you get the ones that sulk, you get the ones that cry, and you get the colts that are bullies and want to kick the crap out of you."

John Martin, owner of Jim And Tonic, agreed to have a couple of horses with O'Neill after the pair met at a stag party in Dublin. So the prospect of Classic runners is no longer bizarre fiction.

"Hopefully, I will have something to run in the top races next year.

John has a two-year-old by Trempolino, who looks very nice.

The jockeys who ride him really like him and I really like him - he could be anything."

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