“I was tired of other ­trainers lying to me, and I wanted a guy who would tell me the truth.” Team Valor’s Barry Irwin, moments after Animal Kingdom’s Kentucky Derby win, telling NBC’s Bob Neumeier why he had hired Graham Motion to train all of the syndicate’s horses.

“I treat my owners like mushrooms. I keep them in the dark and feed them plenty of manure.” Hall of Fame Trainer Charlie Whittingham.

I doubt there’s a mint julep strong enough, even at Churchill Downs, to kill the unpleasant aftertaste of a man’s own foot.

It has been suggested that Barry Irwin, the president of Team Valor International (the syndicate that owns the lightly raced Animal Kingdom, whose Derby ­triumph was his first race on dirt), should have chosen a better backdrop to unleash his tirade on any or all of his former trainers (Team Valor has employed 40 in the past five years alone).

When pressed, Irwin claimed that “more than half” of his former trainers had lied to him, which prompted him to send all of the syndicate’s horses to mild-mannered Englishman Graham Motion, he of the spotless drug record and aversion to performance enhancing medications.

Not surprisingly, Irwin’s 20-word, post-Derby manifesto was greeted with snarls from the racing community at large.

“I thought it was a very inappropriate blanket statement that basically made anybody who ever trained a Team Valor horse guilty of lying on national TV,” said owner Mike Repole, whose Uncle Mo was scratched the day before the Derby because of a gastrointestinal ailment.

There was more indignation, most of it manufactured (“Barry Irwin has made it impossible to cheer for Animal Kingdom or to find much joy in the horse’s Kentucky Derby victory,” one writer mewled) and none of it addressed at the real issue: If Irwin is correct that “more than half” of his trainers have lied to him about something or other regarding the horses in their care, how is this not a problem of immense proportions?

A little background on Irwin: A former turf writer with the Daily Racing Form, Irwin and noted handicapper Jeff Siegel formed their first racing partnership, Clover Racing Stable, in 1987. They won the 1989 Breeders’ Cup Turf with Prized, a colt who was making his first start on grass, and several stakes on both dirt and turf with Star of Cozzene.

When Clover folded in 1992, Irwin and Siegel regrouped as Team Valor; their first acquisition, My Memoirs, was brought over from England to finish a fast-closing second to A.P. Indy in the 1992 Belmont Stakes, the colt’s first outing on dirt.

Before Animal Kingdom, Team Valor’s best Kentucky Derby finish had been with Captain Bodgit, who ran second to Silver Charm in 1997. In 2007, Irwin bought out Siegel’s interest and formed Team Valor International, a reflection of his increasingly global mindset with regard to breeding and training.

Irwin has been described as arrogant, condescending, and a know-it-all. I get that; I’ve interviewed him. But I also get this: that when you call an owner and inform him one of his former stakes horses is toiling as a bottom level claimer, the response you’re most likely to get is, “Well, I don’t own him anymore.”

Not so Barry Irwin.

In 1999, I learned that Eastern Memories, who had beaten Cigar in the 1993 Volante Handicap while owned by Team Valor, was in a precarious situation at Mountaineer Park. Irwin called the horse’s trainer the same day, and while I don’t know what was discussed, I do know that Eastern Memories retired shortly thereafter.

Like all racing partnerships, Team Valor operates under the “buy low, sell high” business model. They scout out a promising horse, buy it, then up the price before selling shares in it to their partners (20 owners make up the Animal Kingdom partnership). They have been accused of affixing inflated price tags on the horses they syndicate, which begs a reference to the old, tawdry expression about the inability to perform a heinous act on the willing.

I’ve known a few of Team Valor’s former trainers, and I can say with some assurance that Irwin is telling the truth about two or three of them.

I can also say with confidence that Barry Irwin probably knows a lot more about what it takes to get a horse ready for a Grade I race today than he did back in 1987. He always had an eye for good horses; over time he developed an ear for distinguishing lies (“There was no heat in the ankle today, boss!”) from truths (“The ankle looks better, but we gave him two grams of bute”).

In 2004, trainer Ralph Nicks and veterinarian David Bryant were suspended 15 days and fined $500 after Bryant was caught injecting a Team Valor horse before a race at Belmont Park. Irwin immediately pulled all Team Valor’s horses from Nicks’ barn, saying he had no choice but to fire the trainer.

“Team Valor has a zero-tolerance policy with regard to drugs,” Irwin said at the time.

It is his well-documented disdain for performing enhancing drugs that led Irwin to Motion, who has never been cited for a medication violation in a career that has spanned 19 years.

But, let’s face it. It’s easy for a high-profile outfit like Team Valor, whose runners earned $3.1 million last year, to issue edicts and call a trainer’s bluff when a situation arises. What about the guy with one or two horses — the proverbial “little owner”— who simply wants the same thing from a trainer that Irwin wants? He’s paying the same day rate, after all, anywhere from $85 to more than $100 a day, and that doesn’t include extras like shoeing, entry fees, all veterinary work, and medications like Lasix, bute, Gastrogard (for ulcers) and robaxin (a muscle relaxant).

One of my closest racetrack cronies, Rich, has owned thoroughbreds since 1969. His stable has never exceeded 10 horses; his best horse earned a big check in a Breeders’ Cup race and produced the homebred family Rich continues to race today.

Rich has had more trainers than George Clooney has had girlfriends (he’ll like that comparison), and he has fired each of them for exactly the same reason.

“I tell them I don’t want any vet work done unless they ask me first,” he said, “and I don’t want them blowing smoke up my (rear end).”

I can only speak for the time I accompanied Rich to a stewards’ hearing, which was being convened to address a complaint he had filed against one of his former trainers and a veterinarian for allegedly “milkshaking” a horse, i.e., administering a baking soda solution that is thought to alleviate fatigue by neutralizing lactic acid buildup.

The trainer’s son had told Rich about the alleged milkshaking, which is banned in all racing jurisdictions, and Rich was furious. The trainer did not admit to milkshaking Rich’s filly, but the veterinarian did cop to billing Rich for unauthorized vet work.

Of course, there’s another side to this argument. Owners get into racing to win races, and, sad to say, some of them would rather not know what it takes to do that. One trainer I spoke with who runs a smaller scale operation with one or two stakes winners complained that new owners are constantly gravitating to the “bigger barns” — trainers like Steve Asmussen (who has served lengthy suspensions for drug positives), Bob Baffert (who has had horses test positive for morphine and clenbuterol) or Todd Pletcher (suspended last year for a procaine positive).

“The same two or three guys have the same kind of horses for the same five or six big owners,” the trainer said. “New owners don’t realize they might be better off getting in with a smaller trainer who’s going to put their best interest in, and doesn’t have five other owners getting jealous because someone else’s horse has the trainer’s focus.”

Perhaps that’s what Irwin had in mind when he selected Motion to helm Team Valor’s horses. Irwin’s decision seemed prescient last week, when legislation was introduced in Congress calling for national rules governing medications in racing, including a proposed ban on all race-day medication.

Like most marriages (it’s true, check the statistics), most owner/trainer relationships will eventually dissolve because of irreconcilable differences. John Shirreffs would never have had Zenyatta in his barn if Ann and Jerry Moss hadn’t fallen out of love with their previous trainer.

Instead of calling for a ceremonial cutting of Barry Irwin’s vocal cords, I wish the racing industry would embrace the sentiment behind his words (embracing Irwin might be asking too much).

As for the details of whatever compelled him to call out “more than half” of his former trainers before the Kentucky Derby winner had even jogged back to the winner’s circle?

Perhaps we’ll never know. But knowing Barry Irwin, I bet we will.

Contact Stephanie Diaz at MediaPlan88@aol.com.