Enduring O’Regan’s Festival ambition
DENIS O’Regan candidly accepts he is not where he expected to be 10 years ago.
Back then, he was retained jockey for the powerful Howard Johnson stable in Durham with a brace of Grade One Cheltenham Festival winners on his CV, including a Stayers’ Hurdle on Inglis Drever. He was 26 and going places. A crack at being champion jockey wasn’t out of the equation while there would be lots more big race winners, not just at Cheltenham either, he felt.
Only things didn’t pan out as he hoped.
He split with Johnson in April 2010, rode for Victor Dartnall and then John Ferguson for a couple of years before returning home as Barry Connell’s retained pilot.
Now a freelance, he rides out regularly for Gordon Elliott, content to take what comes his way, while picking up plenty of outside rides.
O’Regan is still a classy, indemand operator too, and rode his 18th winner of the season last Monday at Leopardstown. This week, he’ll be back at Cheltenham, with a walk-on part at the carnival, rather than that of a leading player, like Ruby Walsh, Barry Geraghty or his fellow east Cork rider, Davy Russell.
He was once spoken of as part of that elite cast.
In 2008, O’Regan was on two winners for the Festival and at cramped odds to become leading rider, only for Walsh to chin him with a Friday double.
He knows from personal experience that the spotlight is on jockeys to deliver at this meeting, like no other.
Initially, he didn’t feel the burden of pressure, certainly not when Inglis Drever won, but as one Festival followed another without a win, the intensity grew.
‘I’d say I was too young then (2008) to put myself under major pressure,’ said O’Regan.
‘I didn’t really grasp the importance of it, the like of Inglis Drever winning a third World Hurdle, there was history involved there. I didn’t really take that into account.
‘After that, when they (winners) weren’t coming, that’s when I had more pressure.
‘You’d be hoping to pull something out of the bag, a miracle could happen, even one of them could go in.
‘Even with John Ferguson, I rode three or four favourites one year and none of them ever completed.’
‘If you get a taste of if, you want it more and then pressure builds on yourself to keep delivering.
‘Because if you come back from Cheltenham with no winner after previous years of winning, then it’s hard, there’s more pressure going into the next Cheltenham.’
‘When I was younger it was always pressure going there with Inglis Drever, and more recently with Tully East for Barry Connell.
‘This year is the first year with no real pressure. I’ll ride what comes my way, you know?’
Not long after leaving Johnson, O’Regan found himself at unglamorous Towcester on a May evening in 2010, riding a horse called Jeu De Roseau for Chris Grant.
He had no idea what was at stake in the £6,500 Niftylift Handicap Hurdle over two miles. Others did.
For Jeu De Roseau was the fourth leg of a monumental gamble orchestrated by Barney Curley, the most calculating and fearless of punters. Unknown to O’Regan, millions were riding on the outcome.
‘It had gone quiet. I was after losing the Howard Johnson job and Barney Curley took a liking to me,’ he recalled
‘It was Towcester on a Monday night. Did you know, he hadn’t an ounce up his sleeve? I lifted him out of it. He beat a horse of Kim Bailey’s.
‘He went off 6/4, he was 25/1 in the morning or something. How much did they make? Millions? I had no idea. You’re better off not knowing.’
By the time, O’Regan rode Jeu De Roseau for the final time, in October 2013, he was starting to re-appear on Irish race cards.
He won the Paddy Power Chase (2014) on Living Next Door and the Galway Hurdle (2015) on Quick Jack, both for Tony Martin.
Not long after, the Connell gig came his way and he enjoyed the buzz of another Festival winner, on Tully East in the Close Brothers Handicap Chase two years ago.
And his current position? ‘I’m 36 now. I don’t come here (Elliott’s yard) with the view to taking over the world. I’m settled, with a wife and child. I’m a lot happier.
‘I love coming in, being part of the team again, a good team, a winning team. If something comes my way — great.
‘There is a lot of talented riders here so I wouldn’t like to think I’d be overtaking any of them.’
Is this where he expected to be 10 years ago?
‘No, I couldn’t have predicted it. I’d like to have ridden more winners, been in with a shout of champion jockey at some stage but you need to be in the right yard for that, and the right backing.
‘The biggest problem I had was getting on a really good horse. It either wasn’t fit, or not right, and he couldn’t maintain a run.
‘If you’re in a huge yard, you get on a good horse, and you stay on him, and a good trainer can keep producing the goods with good horses.’
Elliott is such a trainer and O’Regan, you feel, is in the right place should opportunity knock again.
Asked if the inner drive was still there, his reply was soft-spoken, but emphatic. ‘Oh, yes it is.’