- Prendergast enjoyed more than 2,000 winners in a 60-plus year training career
- Fellow Curragh stalwart Dermot Weld led the tributes to the training great
Legendary trainer Kevin Prendergast has passed away at the age of 92 – just two weeks away from his 93rd birthday.
Prendergast is regarded as one of the all-time great trainers, first enjoying success at the now-defunct Phoenix Park in May 1963 as he carried on the legacy of his late father.
Paddy ‘Darkie’ Prendergast was a champion Flat trainer in Britain three times in three years in the 1960s and passed away exactly 45 years before his son.
Kevin, meanwhile, enjoyed a career spanning longer than 60 years, winning his first Classic in 1972 with Pidget in the Irish Guineas, before the filly won the Pretty Polly Stakes and the Irish St Leger.
When he won the 2,000 Guineas at Newmarket in 1977, he became just the third Irish trainer to win the Newmarket Classic after his father and Vincent O’Brien.
He has now passed away, with fellow Curragh stalwart Dermot Weld leading the tributes.
Legendary trainer Kevin Prendergast has passed away at the age of 92 after a 60-year career
Prendergast enjoyed more than 2,000 winners and was a multi-time Classic winner
Dermot Weld (right) led the tributes, saying that Prendergast was ‘a legend of his lifetime’
‘He was a legend of his lifetime,’ he said. ‘Not only was he a wonderful trainer, but every single one of his horses was always turned out beautifully.
‘He was a wonderful horseman and an outstanding trainer and he will be sadly missed on the Curragh. I would like to send out my sympathies to Kevin’s family. He was a great man and a great trainer.’
Champion trainer Aidan O’Brien added: ‘Kevin was a very special man. It’s desperately sad news and he will be missed by everyone.
‘He was brilliant to me when we were starting out and was always great for advice. If you wanted to sound him out about anything, he was always great to bounce things off. The best way to describe him is special, he was a special man.’
Prendergast was perhaps most famed for his success with Oscar Schindler in the 1990s, and his final Classic winner was in the 2016 Irish 2,000 Guineas with Awtaad.
Prendergast enjoyed more than 2,000 winners in his career, with the veteran selling his Friarstown base on Curragh in the latter years of his life.
His final winner was Copie Conforme, ridden by Chris Hayes, at Bellewstown last year.
