The Pat Smullen Column: Riding Excellence

[Wandering Eyes]

Pat Smullen, the nine-time Irish champion jockey, has joined the TDN team as our new weekly columnist to bring us invaluable insight on the racing and breeding scene as he continues his recovery from illness.

Celebrating Three Top Jockeys

In Ireland, National Hunt and Flat racing pretty much go hand in hand and a lot of my friends are National Hunt jockeys. I watch racing every day so I take a pretty keen interest in jump racing as well, as do most people in Ireland. I don’t think there’s such a difference between the two as perhaps there is in Britain. Most yards in this country are dual-purpose so often you’re riding for people who train National Hunt horses.

Reflecting on last week at Cheltenham, I think the time has come to stop describing women as lady riders. Rachael Blackmore, Bryony Frost and Lizzie Kelly rode at the highest level as good as any rider riding over jumps in my opinion, and they deserve just to be called jockeys, which is what they are. Rachael has worked extremely hard from the beginning, like most of us did, to put herself in the position that she’s in, and full credit to her, and it shows that you need to have talent no matter what. Everyone needs the opportunities, and when Rachael got the opportunities she had the talent to showcase it. I think that was very evident at Cheltenham, and it was the same for all three of them.

I think the tide is turning now and there are going to be lots more opportunities for women in the future. Physical strength is a factor of race-riding, but it’s not the deciding factor of winning and losing races. I had about 20 rides over jumps and it wasn’t long before I put my mind back to Flat racing, so I wouldn’t have much experience on the National Hunt side from a riding perspective, but to have the ability to present horses to obstacles is so important, as well as having a racing brain. There are a whole lot of factors that make a very good jockey and physical strength is only one of them. That said, Rachael, Bryony and Lizzie look as strong in finishes as the majority of male riders.

We’re in a different era when it comes to strength and conditioning training for all jockeys and I’m glad that in this era mindsets are changing too.

Young Riders to Note

There are a lot of young apprentices riding at the moment who look like they have what it takes to make it, and there are two lads who have really caught my eye and have been riding extremely well over the winter.

One is Ben Coen, who was also riding really well through the turf season and has risen quite quickly to where he is now. He looks like he has the ability to push forward and make a career as a rider. Tactically he’s quite astute and he just seems to be progressing well.

Shane Cross, who is apprenticed to Joseph O’Brien, rode well through the summer and had good opportunities. I’ve watched him closely this winter and I think he’s improved throughout the winter as Joseph has given him better opportunities. We all know that riding better horses gives you more confidence and I think both lads should have a fruitful summer ahead of them.

RACE, the school in Kildare, does a very good job and it’s becoming more difficult for trainers themselves to bring the young jockeys on because there is so much extra pressure on them. I admire any person who trains horses—it’s not a job, it’s a vocation. In the past in Ireland, the trainers really educated the riders and I think there is still an onus on them to do that if riders are apprenticed to them. I was very fortunate to be apprenticed to Tom Lacey who is a dual-purpose trainer and didn’t have big numbers. He took the time to educate me to be respectful of owners, how to explain myself—which is even more important when things go wrong—and then obviously in the art of race-riding, and he was a race-rider himself.

I think that is phasing out a bit now and that’s why we have started to introduce the idea of jockey coaches in Ireland and Britain. There is room for more jockey coaching as long as the right individuals are doing it. You might have been a very good rider but you might not be able to get your point across well and be a good teacher.

Spring Dreams

Everyone’s dreams are alive at this time of the year—every owner, trainer, breeder, jockey—because you don’t know what you’ve got in your stable at the moment and there’s so much excitement and anticipation of what’s to come.

If anything, this is the most difficult thing for me at the present moment because I love riding work, I love riding out. I’ve loved my whole 20-odd years with Dermot [Weld]. I was in there five mornings a week and this is the most exciting time of the year because every 2-year-old he put me on, I’d be thinking and wondering if this was my next Group 1 horse, and we all know how scarce they are.

This is always my favourite time of the year. I love getting up and going to work in the morning because you never know, you could just throw your leg over one and it could be the one you’ve been waiting to find all your career. Obviously I would love to be there doing that, but it’s not possible at the moment. I’ve been in contact with Dermot and we’ve been speaking about the upcoming week and the entries he’ll have for Sunday. He keeps me involved, which is great, and I’m still excited, don’t get me wrong, but it’s just in a different way.

I had a very difficult time through the surgery, though thankfully it was successful and the surgeon was very pleased with how it went. There was a complication afterwards which meant they had to operate again so I had two major surgeries in the space of six weeks and the recovery from that was quite tough.

But I was blessed that at the beginning of all this the one thing I learned was that being a jockey was a big help for me because I was extremely fit with no excess weight on me. The surgeon and nurses commented on numerous occasions that my physical strength was a huge factor in helping me get through everything that I had to get through. I had a course of chemotherapy followed by the two surgeries and now I’m having post-op treatment. That will be complete in early May and hopefully it will have done its job and we can introduce a bit of normality back into our lives.

Nobody is putting any pressure on me but of course people are asking if I’ll ride again. I’ve no idea at the moment. The hope is to ride again. I’d love to do that but I’m a realist in that if I don’t recover in time throughout this year it will be two years missed and then it’s a question of whether or not I could get back to the level where I want to compete. We just have to wait and see how things go and my priority is to get healthy and well again.

Whatever presents itself after that I’ll be quite happy with. There is life after race-riding so if it doesn’t happen again I’ll move onto something else, hopefully within the industry. I still have the ambition to ride and the drive to want to compete—that’s all still there—but if I can’t get myself back physically and mentally to the place where I was before I wouldn’t come back. I’d have to convince myself that I could get back to the same level.

Helping Riders Through Illness

One thing I feel very strongly about from a jockey’s perspective with the position I’m in at the moment is the cover for jockeys through illness as well as through injury. It’s different if you have a race fall but there is zero cover for illness and not everyone feels comfortable with going to the [Irish Jockeys] Trust for help. It’s something I’ve brought up with Andrew Coonan at the Irish Jockeys Association and with the Turf Club, and I’d like to see something put in place.

I was in a very fortunate position that I had health cover and insurance and I’m very lucky that I’m married to a woman that had everything in place in case anything went wrong. Unfortunately something did happen but fortunately we were well insured on a personal basis. Not all riders are in a position to be able to do that and many in this situation would be in a difficult position financially. I’m well aware of how fortunate I’ve been throughout my career and the fact that I was in a position to be able to take a couple of years and then hopefully resume, whether it’s race-riding or some other aspect of work. But I do feel that we need to look after people who get sick, to help them provide for their family or pay their mortgage.

I’ve said before that the amount of goodwill that’s been shown towards me has been nothing short of overwhelming and in the next year or so I’ll be working towards putting something in place for riders who fall ill and to help them get back on their feet.

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