RUBY WALSH
I never want to have a real job
RUBY WALSH was a few minutes late arriving at the Westbury Hotel on Friday morning.
The Irish champion jockey had come from a check-up at the Sports Clinic in Santry where, had he chosen, a 16 bus would have brought him into the city centre and spared the hassle of sitting in traffic. Might that have helped? ‘Sure I’d have still been late,’ he said. ‘Did you see the Prime Time programme about three people crossing Dublin by car, bus and Luas? The fellah in the car was first.’
When it comes knowing where he should be in a race, and what speed he should be travelling, Walsh possesses the most accurate timepiece under his helmet.
No matter what is happening in front of him or behind, Walsh sets the speedometer to the needs of the steed under him. It’s one of the reasons he’s first past the post more often than most.
He’s the same with his recovery from the broken right leg which ripped a huge chunk out of his season, 11 weeks ago yesterday at Punchestown.
Walsh half-toyed with the notion of pulling a flanker and persuading the medics he was fit enough to ride in the Dublin Racing Festival this weekend but knew it was too soon. ‘It’s 12 weeks for a broken leg to heal,’ he said, ‘not 11.’
He has February 25 in mind or maybe March 4, but he will be back in less than a third of the time it took Seamus Coleman to recover from a similar injury, a broken fibula and tibia of the right leg.
Walsh doesn’t know Coleman – ‘an unbelievable professional’ – but he was at the Aviva Stadium last March when he saw the challenge which felled the Irish captain.
He felt there was no malice in the tackle by Neil Taylor but accepts that ‘maybe he read it wrong as an unfortunate accident.’
For all that he and Coleman have the same injury, racing and football are not parallel sports. In each one, the tibia does a dissimilar job.
‘Racing is a completely different sport to soccer, it’s a total compression of your muscles, whereas playing soccer is a complete extension of your body,’ said Walsh.
‘My right fibia will carry all my body weight, but it won’t do much more, while Seamus has to learn to run on it again and to tackle.
‘Your leg will be 97% healed from a broken leg in 12 weeks, but for Seamus it would have taken almost a year to get to 100% because what he does with his legs is different to the way I use mine.’
Walsh has forged a career from legs of iron, razor sharp grey cells and a drive to be successful. He is deep into is 39th year, a father of four girls, but there are many more hurdles, and fences, to cross. His great friend AP McCoy was 41 when he called it a day, Noel Fehily is older now and riding out of his skin, so why would Walsh consider calling it quits? On the immediate horizon is Naas on Sunday week, Cheltenham gets under way in five weeks’ time. Fairyhouse, Aintree and Punchestown all gallop into view in April, and Walsh has ground to make up.
How much longer does he want to keep going?
‘I haven’t thought about the end, so I don’t have the answer for you,’ he said. ‘Of course, I know there will be a day when I won’t be able to ride a racehorse.
‘Age shouldn’t be a label, it’s how fit, how strong, how able you are and if you are still in demand. Ryan Giggs played in the Premier League until he was 40 and that’s much more physically demanding than riding a horse.
‘Physically I now have to work a lot harder, but mentally I’m ahead of where I ever was. It doesn’t matter how much I slow down through age as I didn’t have to run in the first place. So once the hunger is there, and people still want you I’d like to keep doing it. I don’t want a real job.’
He’s chalked up over 2,500 winners, including a record 56 at the Cheltenham Festival, yet there is much he still yearns for.
‘I’d like to ride a Gold Cup winner for Willie (Mullins), I’d like to win a race at Cheltenham on a horse of my father’s, and I’d love to win the English Grand National again.’
Cheltenham. It’s where Walsh has reigned as top jockey 11 times since 2004. ‘To me, I would look more at strike rate, and how prolific you can be. Cheltenham is 28 races, this weekend is 15 races, 13 for professionals, it would be your strike rate at that which would be more important to me.
‘Like Ronaldo, he has performed at the highest level, in the Champions’ League, so has Messi, but they do it in the Wednesday night games in La Liga too, in the Spanish Cup. You have to be able to perform across all spectrums to fully deserve recognition.’
That ‘recognition’ is at its highest at the greatest of all gatherings in the Cotswolds, one Walsh has never missed. ‘Jesus, don’t put the mockers on me!’ he says in mock anger.
‘No, I can’t imagine not being there. I have never contemplated that thought, I’m not going to start now. Obviously, I didn’t have a calendar in my pocket but when I fell at Punchestown I did calculate that there was 16 weeks to the Cheltenham Festival.’
Calculations, calculations. It’s what he does better than most.