Ireland's rich/poor divide over jumps is widening fast - that's why we need the likes of Conor O'Dwyer to keep thriving

Conor O'Dwyer opened his doors to the media this week and in doing so provided a poignant insight into life at the helm of a modestly sized jumps stable tasked with existing in a modern Irish training environment that is so utterly unrecognisable from what it was when he set out two decades ago. 

O'Dwyer doesn't have an emerging equine talent that he chiselled out of the rock of frugality and he hasn't suddenly won the support of a rich financier who is poised to catapult him into the limelight. He is one of racing's most endearing individuals, a revered former jockey whose capacity to be, in equal measure, both inherently sympathetic and yet ruthlessly unerring on the big day defined his inimitable identity during his long riding career.

• Dual Gold Cup-winning jockey turned trainer Conor O'Dwyer on why life is more difficult than ever for small Irish yards 

O'Dwyer, whose wife Audrey has been through an ordeal since suffering a brain aneurysm four years ago, is renowned as being a wonderful horseman, but there is nothing to suggest right now he is on the cusp of becoming any more prominent as a trainer than he has been of late. That's the shame.