Jockey News

Just seen on the Racing Post that jockey Matt Griffiths is in a stable but critical condition in hospital after a fatal car crash not far from me. No other details but thoughts and prayers are with him and his family. He’s a lovely lad.
 
A friend updated me this morning. Matt has internal bleeding, head injuries and multiple fractures :( The other lad in the car was sadly killed.
 
Oisin Murphy saying on twitter that failed jockey breath test so not allowed to ride today. Can't help thinking really hope this is not second episode in slippery slope for him.
 
Big spread in the Sunday Times today RACING’S DIRTY SECRET - Revealed: the shocking bullying allegations made by jockey Bryony Frost that the sport doesn’t want to talk about. Apparently an investigation report was submitted to the BHA in April who informed Dunne that there were formal charges against him under the rules of racing and that an oral hearing before a disciplinary tribunal would consider the case. The BHA have refused to comment on whether or not this hearing has taken place.
 
G-G said:
Oisin Murphy saying on twitter that failed jockey breath test so not allowed to ride today. Can't help thinking really hope this is not second episode in slippery slope for him.
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Just seen on ATR that he has given up his licence temporarily while sorting out health issues, BHA to hold hearing re breaking Covid regulations when he comes back. Oh dear oh dear.....
 
This is a shocker. Not only can a race be won by ignoring the whip rules but such a ride can get further recognition it seems.

Sadly not without precedent I think (although I might be misremembering) didn’t Patrick Mullins get some plaudits after beating Rathvinden half to death


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The Munirs have posted he has a broken hip, you'd think they would know although I'm confused as to how he has been allowed to leave hospital, surely he would have needed surgery.
 
After arriving home soon after midnight on Saturday, the rider said on Sunday: "It's nice to be home but it's broken - they've confirmed a fracture in the hip - and I'm going to see a specialist on Monday or Tuesday and I'll know a bit more after that in terms of how bad it is.
 
I thought straight away he’d broken something like his femur as he was holding it as he lay there. Poor guy.
 
****..that's bad news . He's no spring chicken at 38 years old..retirement can't be far off...Bromely won't be retiring anytime soon so management is unlikely maybe a training career isn't to far away. Sorry to be so glum but the older you get the harder it is to get back to full fitness
 
Good RP interview with Paul Carberry in tomorrow’s edition

It seems a grave injustice that the seventh most successful jump jockey of all time, with 1,589 winners woven into the fabric of a fabulous era for the sport, is remembered most for a race he didn't even win.

"That's just the way the world works, isn't it?," says Paul Carberry, the two-time Irish champion jump jockey. "If we had won that day it would have gone down as the greatest ride of all time. The best ever. It just didn't happen. That's racing."

For any confused snowflakes out there we are, of course, talking about Harchibald in the 2005 Champion Hurdle at Cheltenham and a piece of jockeyship that still polarises opinion. Almost 17 years on and Carberry is back in the dock giving evidence.

"I thought I was going to win everywhere," he says. "Even halfway up the run-in I thought I was going to win. He was a funny horse, though, you could never really go for him. You had to entice him into it. Everyone thought he was a dog, but he wasn't. He just gave you so much and then that was it. He gave all he had on the bridle. I actually got there too soon, if anything.

"I knew I had done my best and he had done his best, he just didn't have enough left at the end. We always knew it was going to be a struggle up the hill. There was probably something there with his wind, something used to catch him, and that was why he had such a high head carriage. When he used to come off the bridle, you could get off and push him but it wouldn't make any difference. He wouldn't budge."

Carberry knew Harchibald better than anyone.

"Yeah, the two of us gelled very well together," he says. "I knew him inside out and knew he had done his best that day. Of course, you couldn't tell that to all the people booing me coming back down the chute afterwards. They were roaring and shouting at me, calling me every name under the sun. The thing is, if I gave him a bad ride and thought I should have won, that stuff would have hurt a lot more. If I went too soon, and then he stopped, it would have been a different story altogether."

You are probably wondering whether the present-day Carberry is a different story altogether. Fear not, same as it ever was. The glorious giddiness remains intact. You still get the impression if you got up to go to the toilet there would be a whoopee cushion on your chair when you return or, worse again, he might whip the chair from underneath you altogether. He is a serial prankster; the most lovable of rogues; the closest racing has ever got to Gazza.

Sitting motionless on Harchibald when within a stone's throw of the line in a Champion Hurdle may be our abiding memory of Carberry, but what about the day the pair gave Rooster Booster a hurdle of a head start at Kempton and still caught him? Or the time he mollycoddled Monbeg Dude to win a Welsh National? There was the cheeky wave back at Best Mate when winning the Lexus at Leopardstown on Beef Or Salmon and, a personal favourite of mine, his brilliance on Bellvano in the Grand Annual.

Carberry was different. He was an artist all right, but the portraits he painted were like nothing we had seen before, nor since.

"It's hard to explain," he says, when asked to explain his ethos. "You try to squeeze them up into you and get them to take you there. You're trying to save energy because, when you release it, they're going to go. Basically what I used to do was try to convince each horse they were going better than they actually were. That gave them confidence and made them feel better. The longer you can hold on to them, the better the horse is going to finish. You fill them up with air. That's the way I always liked to do things."

So, then, were there times when you were travelling a lot worse than you were letting on?

"Oh, yeah," he laughs. "There were days I was hanging on to absolutely nothing and just hoping they might find something. I was always trying to fill them up, get air into their lungs, so they might get their second wind. I see so many horses get beaten because when a horse is starting to cut out underneath them, they [jockeys] push them. That's the worst thing you can do as they stop straight away. If you fill them up, you have half a chance of getting a bit further.

"I remember winning on Random Prince one day at Fairyhouse early on in my career. I kicked on about two furlongs out and Noel [Meade] gave out stink to me afterwards. He said the winning post isn't at the second-last or third-last. The same day Charlie Swan gave me the simplest piece of advice I ever got and I never forgot it. He said 'when you're going well, stay going well'. I always remembered that throughout my whole career."

That stellar career lasted more than a quarter of a century and incorporated 58 Grade 1 winners. The first of those was on Gambolling Doc in the Royal Bond in 1994, and the last turned out to be Don Cossack in the Punchestown Gold Cup 21 years later. The game he started was very different to the game he finished.

He says: "The weighing room was a brilliant place to be when I started, there was such a great atmosphere in there. It was only in the latter couple of years I was riding, especially at Cheltenham, when there was no atmosphere whatsoever. The place had changed completely. It all got very serious. Jockeys started going to the gym instead of going to the pub!

"Cheltenham years ago was different to the way it is now. We used to fly over after Naas on the Sunday then head out Sunday night. Then ride out the Monday and maybe head for a boozy lunch afterwards. It was a mad week altogether. In saying that, you'd always try to make sure it wasn't too mad. If you were riding good horses you couldn't be seen to be falling around the place or anything like that.

"Back in Ireland too after every race meeting you would always meet up in a pub somewhere. We'd have a few drinks and a right bit of craic. They were brilliant times."

Those brilliant times also got Carberry into bother. In 2005 he was arrested after setting a newspaper on fire during an Aer Lingus flight from Malaga to Dublin.

"I'm a messer and I was just messing with a lighter. Davy Condon was reading the paper beside me and I lit a tiny bit of it. It went out straight away and there was a small puff of smoke, but that was it. It was nothing. Everything was fine until the pilot said over the Tannoy that there was a fire on board. They just blew it out of all proportion. Nobody knew anything had happened until the pilot said it. It was just of those things."

Carberry escaped a custodial sentence and did some community service instead.

In 2009, he failed a breath test for a second time ahead of racing at Naas. He was suspended for 30 racedays and missed out on winning the Fighting Fifth and Christmas Hurdle on Go Native because of it.

"I got 30 racedays," he says, while shaking his head. "It was my second offence but I was only just over the limit. They definitely made an example of me. It was our first night out after Casey-Lou [his daughter] was born and we were over a friend's house for dinner. I actually went to bed early enough that night. I told the stewards I only had one glass of wine, but they kept filling it!

"Noel came to me after that and said that I'd have to give up the drink if I wanted to keep riding for him, so that's what I did. I gave it up then for five or six years. I didn't ride any better for it either!"

The was devilment in Carberry back then and there is still devilment in him now. He tells the stories in a way which makes you think that were he transported back in time he would do everything the very same way and wouldn't change a thing.

His wife Rachel arrives in at the perfect time to tell us whether her husband has mellowed at all.

"He's like a bouncy ball and loves the craic, but he's more of a family man now," she says. "The wild days are not as wild as they once were.

"The one thing about Paul was that he never got nervous when he was riding. Ever. If something went wrong, and even if it was really bad, he'd just say, 'Sure, what can you do about it now?' I'd be panicking like a mad thing and he wouldn't give two fiddlers. He's just so easy-going. It's unbelievable really."

Speaking of unbelievable, we couldn't really believe our eyes one day at Leopardstown when Carberry took it out of one of the greatest steeplechasers of all time. Beef Or Salmon had Best Mate cooked and the man on board spotted an opportunity.

"I got a good bit of stick over that," he says, as we replay the 2004 Lexus in our heads. "A good few of the crowd at Leopardstown that day complained to the stewards so they called me in, but even the stewards themselves were laughing. They knew it was all just a bit of craic, but they had to be seen to be doing something. I just told them I was having the craic with Jim Culloty and I wasn't disrespecting Best Mate.

"It was just a spur-of-the-moment thing, I just did it for the craic. Beef Or Salmon was brilliant around Leopardstown. You could kick after the third-last, the ditch, and then he would just keep on going. I knew I had him covered and when I jumped the last I said to myself 'ah, sure I'll have a bit of craic now'."

Craic, it seems, was just as important to Carberry as winners were. He was around in an era when craic was all part of the process and, boy, did he enjoy himself. You sense he still does, but with a wife and four kids the 47-year-old Paul is a bit different to the 17-year-old Paul. Or maybe not.

"I was a messer [as a kid], but a quiet messer. I was very shy," he admits.

And now?

"Still much the same, I think! I haven't changed much. I'm still shy. I hate big crowds. When I'm with my own friends, I'm fine, but when I'd be with different people or people I don't know I'd still be very shy."

You must be curious as to what Carberry is doing with himself now. Well, it turns out he has never been busier.

"I've always been breaking in horses and doing pre-training and I still do that now – for Mr McManus [JP], Noel [Meade] and a few for Gordon [Elliott] and Gavin [Cromwell]," he says. "That always keeps me busy and I took up showjumping before I stopped race-riding too. It was a hobby, but I always loved it. I had five horses competing during the summer.

"It's funny because it's the complete opposite to racing. Instead of going flat to the boards, you're trying to go slower and get in close to the jumps. So, I had to change my whole way of riding. All I wanted to do at the start was kick the horses into the jumps. It was hard to get the hang of it, you have to get in as tight as you can and get them to use their back-end more. You're trying to stand off the fences and slice through the top when you're racing. Showjumping couldn't be any more different."

Before we go, back to that Harchibald hearing we began with. The jury, it turns out, came back with their verdict the following month at Punchestown when the jockey sent him into the lead at the last before losing out by a short head to Brave Inca.

"I rode him the way everybody told me I should have ridden him at Cheltenham at Punchestown next time," he says. "Noel told me to ride him that way. I got so mad at him afterwards. We threw a Grade 1 down the Swanee that day. I could have just sat and produced him after the last and he would definitely have won."

Who am I to argue? Carberry, after all, was the master of his craft.

Paul Carberry on . . .

Rachael Blackmore
She's amazing. She just seems to have no fear whatsoever and always lets the horses do the jumping. There's never any bother. She doesn't interfere with the horse at all. She lets them do the talking and the jumping. It's brilliant to watch.

Beating Denman in the 2006 Royal & SunAlliance Novices' Hurdle
I didn't even know who Denman was! I didn't know he was unbeaten or whether he was any good at all. I just rode my own race on Nicanor and did my own thing. Noel [Meade] actually wanted me to ride Mr Nosie that day, but there was no way I was getting off Nicanor.

The golden era of jump jockeys
It's hard to say who was the best, they were all brilliant. AP's [McCoy] numbers speak for themselves. Ruby [Walsh] and Barry [Geraghty] were just unbelievable and I always thought Charlie [Swan] was brilliant too. I rode with Richard Dunwoody and Adrian Maguire as well, and I always thought Graham Bradley was very good.
 
I was really pleased with myself when Hardy Eustace beat Harchibald.my way of thinking was like two lorries going up a hill,one changes down early and the other comes up in top gear and just when he changes down he slows for a second before he gets going again and the other gains that momentum.
I knew Hardy wouldnt give in and knew Harchibald would run like he did.for me the result was just as I'd imagined.
 
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