RUBY’S BACK TO HIS BEST
Walsh opening-day double makes tough winter worthwhile
RUBY Walsh doesn’t do sentiment. He’s a hard-nosed professional with the narrow focus of a winner. It’s why he’s been the finest jockey to grace the coliseum of Cheltenham.
And yet behind the mask resides a mere mortal, a family man.
On a spring-like afternoon when he delivered two Grade One triumphs for Willie Mullins on Footpad (Arkle Chase) and Benie Des Dieux (Mares’ Hurdle) to take his career total at the Cheltenham Festival to a staggering 58, Walsh opened a window to his soul.
Asked how far away this day felt for him when he was laid up from racing for 110 days with a broken leg from November, Walsh glanced about.
‘I’d say you’d want to ask Gillian [his wife],’ he said quietly, eyes watering before an emotional reunion in the parade ring, where a tearful Gillian admitted: ‘I never thought I’d see him ride again.’
Walsh knew he wasn’t easy to be around his wife and kids when he was out of the saddle for almost four months. ‘I was an average dad and a horrible husband,’ he admitted.
‘When you’re not in good humour, I wouldn’t be great company. They say behind every good man, there’s a great woman. And I definitely had that.
‘I mean, to have a newborn and three kids is hard enough, but to have a newborn, three kids and a husband who’s about as much use to you as an ashtray on a motorbike… I’d say Gillian had a long winter.’
Walsh, not an easy patient, struggled to cope with his rate of progress.
‘It’s the same for every sports person, it’s not the physical pain. You can put your leg in a cast, take the pressure off it and it stops aching. But it’s the incapacity of it.
‘You go from being an active sports person, working every day of the week to doing nothing. And that feeling of uselessness, that’s the hardest part.
‘Enda King in Santry [sports clinic], always said to me “What’s the target?” I gave him the target straight away. Every week I’d go in, I’d say to him “F***, I’m not making the progress quick enough.
‘He could see the progress. I couldn’t. He said he’d have me right [for Cheltenham] and to be fair to him he did. I wish I’d met him when I was 20.
‘There were a lot of low days and ordinary days. It ain’t easy, but it’s been worth it,’ he added.
It certainly was worth it as Walsh returned with his trademark precision timing to the arena where he rides likes no other jockey.
On both Footpad and Benie Des Dieux, Walsh won the race in his head, not in his legs. Each time, he sat off the pace while others went too fast, too soon, in the gruelling ground.
It helped that Footpad was in a class of his own in the Arkle, where he recovered from a jolting error at halfway to reel in Petit Mouchoir and win by 14 lengths.
But for the gaffe, the winning distance would have been far greater.
‘After making a huge mistake like that, a lot of guys would have been slapping and pushing to get him racing,’ observed Mullins. ‘Ruby just sat, sat and sat. He has the balls to do it. There’s not anyone that I know as good as him.’
The ride by Walsh on Benie Des Dieux was also a candidate for the best of the week, according to Mullins, as the 9/2 shot arrived last on the scene to win by a gritty half a length.
Mullins doesn’t lavish praise lightly, but from the moment he spied a 17-year-old Walsh in a bumper at Leopardstown, he knew he was something special.
‘Jackie [his wife] and I looked at each other and we said “there’s the future, there’s our guy.” Little did I think he’d be such a top professional. At the time, I thought he’d be too heavy to make it. It shows you how determined he was to get his weight down. ‘He got it under control, which showed his commitment to the job.’ ‘I would say he is as fit, if not fitter, than he has ever been in his life, he has been doing so much rehab and training.’
The ‘commitment’ to his job was evident when Walsh travelled regularly in mid-winter to Mullins’ stables in Closutton to check on the Cheltenham crew.
‘He was coming down in rough weather with his foot sticking out of this plaster, on crutches and trying to get up and down our gallops.
‘I wouldn’t want him staying away. He wanted to see all those horses, what he might ride, listen to the lads’ summation after work. He knew everything so he didn’t have to go ask anyone. The whole thing was just kicking in his brain.
‘When we were doing the declarations here this week, it’s all so sharp in his mind where he thinks the horses should go. He’s a huge asset, both on and off the horses.’
Mullins, a rugby fan bound for Twickenham on Saturday, compares Walsh to out-half Johnny Sexton in his ability to call the right play at the right time.
‘Ruby can make decisions which 99 times out of 100, fellas would be afraid to make. He has the confidence to take that drop kick, for want of a better word, in the final minute of the game.’
‘Ruby makes decisions most guys would be afraid to make’