ONE thing I remember about my time in Alan Swinbank’s yard was his training theory: ‘work hard, feed hard’.
He would work the horses hard and then feed them well when the work was done. He bought into it. Everyone in the yard worked back from it, gained by it, lost by it, questioned it, at times.
I used to wonder then what was the approach at other yards around the country. Was this a common training technique? How important was it in terms of success? What I learned since is that training isn’t an exact science.
The reason I’m starting out here this week is someone asked me why don’t trainers draw the same kind of criticisms as managers in other professional sports. The second question was even more pointed: is the relationship between a jockey and a trainer the same as a player/manager relationship in other sports.
Both questions encouraged me to take a deeper look at racing.
The first part of the question suggests there is some kind of training template but in my experience there is none. The only common rule is routine. The only common mistake — a lack of confidence in the work already done and the temptation to bring the horse to peak too soon.
When I listen to people like Paul Nicholls and Aidan O’Brien now I find it so refreshing when I hear them say things like, ‘We actually gave the jockey the wrong instructions there’ or ‘We just didn’t get the tactics right on the day’.
It takes a certain level of confidence to be honest like that. A smaller trainer would be terrified that owners would run for cover. But at the top level, self-belief combined with self-awareness is one big signpost for success.
It too reminds me of a time when well into the career of Kauto Star, Paul Nicholls said that they had finally figured out how to train the horse. Fair play. It’s an honest admission that in training you need time to ring out the mistakes.
It goes back to the point that all the moving around jockeys do is not a good thing for the sport because the more a jockey sits on a horse the better understanding he or she will have of that horse as an athlete.
I often find myself in a situation where I say, ‘How truthful can I be here’ in terms of what I’m going to tell the trainer and the owner about their horse.
Sometimes I think I would be better off biting my lip but then I know five or six months down the road they’d have to admit that I was telling them the truth and it’s harder for a trainer to get to that point when the jockey changes regularly.
Something that can get lost a lot along the way in top-level sport is the fun element. When I started out riding I did so because I enjoyed it; it was fun. Days when I ride out or for the Easterby yard remind me why it was I started down the road to becoming a professional jockey.
They are very professional, but their manner is casual. They enjoy what they do and that’s infectious. Tim and Peter also have great judgement. Often you are just beaten by the better horse on the day. It’s that simple.
Driving time for a jockey is thinking time and I’ve had some of that since my daughter Aoife was born. I’ve thought about the sacrifices I’ve made to do this job, leaving my country and my family behind, working every weekend, the injuries, the pressures, the pressure my career puts on my time and on my relationship.
I think how lucky I am to have a wife like Aimee. When we met and were getting serious I had to lay out the kind of life it was going to be; that she was going to be with someone who had to put racing first if they were even going to compete as a professional.
I can only imagine the strain if that understanding wasn’t there — for some it’s not. We are all chasing winners. There is a group of us now in the Weigh Room into our 30s and we are all still chasing winners just as we were when riding as amateurs.
Time hasn’t subdued the desire. If anything it has made the desire more acute. I don’t celebrate birthdays anymore.
The morning of my 30th birthday splashed me sober like a cold bucket of water. I know other jockeys my age feel the same way because we should be talking about what we might do next, after racing, a life beyond, but we never do. We’ll avoid that conversation for as long as we can.
The great leveller is that whether you are 21 or 31, you are only one race away from a career-ending injury. In the back of our heads we all know that. But the way I feel right now, I’m thinking of a career into my 40s if I can stay injury free.
I’ve thought lately what I would say to my daughter if she came to me when she was older and said she wanted to be a jockey. I’d hope by that stage that she would have seen the impact and effect of the lifestyle to determine what she would be letting herself in for, because the game is getting tougher and you have to have that selfish single-mindedness that involves putting racing first.
I refer back again to the soccer analogy because it was that comparison that led me to this column: the trainer, the jockey, where the modern jockey fits in the yard, criticisms of trainers — the food chain.
When Bobby Zamora scored the goal for QPR that sent them back to the Premier League, there was a headline the next day that said the victory was worth £120m to the club. That money will have a trickle-down effect just as prize money comes back into the yard and into the pockets of the stable lads.
You never forget that when you are lining up to go to Post. Does that feel like a burden? Sometimes, but you want the pressure. There is a buzz with dealing with the responsibility.
People sometimes forget too that as a professional you have to deal with owners who may not come from a racing background and that is part of the job — I’ll never forget driving a 600-mile round-trip for one ride and before the race the owner said, ‘Will you do your best to do your best’.
I bit my lip but I remember thinking I didn’t come all this f***ing way to take it easy.
It does force you to think about life beyond racing. Do I want to go into training? Sometimes I think I’d be more than happy driving a truck around the country.
But not yet…
