‘I just wanted to walk away in one piece’
His legacy assured, Ruby Walsh didn’t want a circus attending his retirement...
‘I WAS LIKE ANY FELLA WHO HAS HAD ENOUGH OF HIS JOB’
FROM silks to suits, this Christmas will be that bit different for Ruby Walsh. For the first time in 25 years, he won’t be a jockey; instead, he’ll provide crisp analysis for ITV and RTÉ at Kempton and Leopardstown respectively – and maybe point punters towards a winner or two.
As an ace pilot, Walsh was a Kempton regular on St Stephen’s Day for the “King George”, where his only concern was making it to the track from his Kildare home on time for racing.
If there are travel issues next Thursday, so be it. ‘ITV Racing will manage just fine without me, I can do a phone call for them. But as a jockey, you had to be there,’ said Walsh, who also provides expert analysis on Racing TV.
Being a jockey was his calling. It was something he excelled at and enjoyed, hurtling from hurdle to hurdle, fence to fence, horse to horse, track to track. There was no career master plan, rather he went with the flow, took the highs and the hits, after which he’d count down the days until his return.
And then came Let’s Dance.
The nasty fall at Punchestown in November 2017 was the third of the card for Walsh that Saturday and by far the most serious as he sustained a broken right leg.
He was 38 and aware his career clock was ticking.
‘I’d say I made my mind up about quitting the day I broke my leg off Let’s Dance,’ Walsh revealed this week over lunch in The Boar’s Head, Capel Street.
‘I eventually got to retirement from Let’s Dance, but it took me a while to get there,’ he quipped.
It took more than 18 months, during which he sustained another broken leg, at the 2018 Cheltenham Festival, and back damage at Killarney, before he finally hung up his whip.
Walsh couldn’t have scripted it better either, standing in his stirrups at his local track, Punchestown, after partnering Kemboy to victory in the Gold Cup last May. Not many were in the know. ‘I told (my wife) Gillian at the start of last season that it would be my last and I told my dad (Ted) on the Monday before Punchestown that I was quitting, but I didn’t tell Willie (Mullins) until I got off Kemboy,’ said Walsh.
‘I didn’t want for me what happened with AP (McCoy) when he announced he was quitting two months before he did actually stop. I won’t call it a circus, but there were a lot of presentations and things, that wasn’t for me.
‘I didn’t want it, I just wanted to be a jockey and then walk away in one piece. Each way of doing it is fine, I just wanted to do it the way I favoured.
‘Very few people get to go out of their sport on their own terms. If you pick the day, but don’t tell anyone, well then you get to do it when you want to.
‘If I had said “I’m quitting at Punchestown” the first question is
“what day?” then “what race?”. It’s less pressure the way I did it. I had to call it some time, I might have done it if Bellshill had won the Cheltenham Gold Cup. But then I’d have missed on winning an Irish Grand National (Burrows Saint) and a Punchestown Gold Cup.’
That meant keeping his poker face on, the same one he wore in battle when his rivals tried to second guess him. As usual, no one could figure Walsh out.
‘I knew when I pulled Bellshill up after a circuit in the Gold Cup that it was the end of my Cheltenham winners.’
Leaving the famed coliseum of jump racing that evening, Walsh scrawled the number ‘59’ above his peg in the jockey’s weighroom. There would be no 60, not that he minded.
‘I never started out thinking I’d have the success I have, I just loved every day of it. I appreciated every Cheltenham winner I had, and every other big winner I had too.’
There were so many big winners. Walsh ticked off all four ‘Majors’ at Cheltenham, five King George wins on Kauto Star, two Grand Nationals at Aintree, one of them for his father Ted on Papillon, and in his final season in the plate, he booted home Burrows Saint to secure a first Irish Grand National for Mullins.
This week, he will observe and analyse from inside the parade ring. He’ll know what to say, too.
‘ITV and Racing TV have completely different audiences. On Racing TV you are speaking to people with a decent knowledge of racing, maybe 50,000 of them.
‘With ITV, you are talking to the general public, perhaps 750,000 who will know that the King George is on St Stephen’s Day and you’ve got to entertain and inform them.’
‘On Racing TV I can call him a 128-rated horse and people will know what it means. On ITV I have to say that he’s still a good way off Champion Hurdle class.
‘I don’t change my opinions for the two channels, but I do say the same thing in different ways.’
‘I enjoy the media work now, I did this before I stopped. I was lucky, I finished when I wanted to. I didn’t finish because of injury, or I got the sack, or somebody took my job.
‘I finished when I’d had enough of race riding. I was like any fella who has had enough of a job. That was me.’
As for his TV and radio work, Walsh is unsure of how long he’ll stick at that. ‘I don’t have a 20-year plan in my life, I don’t have a fiveyear plan either,’ he said.
While he’s holding a microphone, Walsh will call things as he sees it, without fear or favour.
He’s up for races starting at times which allow for proper build-up and less chance of an overlap as was the case last month when the prestigious John Durkan Chase clashed with the Peterborough Chase and racing fans were shortchanged.
By coincidence, on Thursday the BHA and HRI announced that they would dispense with the standard five-minute marks for race times on a trial basis next February.
Walsh would love to shake up the Irish National Hunt calendar by eliminating second meetings on Sundays and combining half-decent cards at Punchestown and Cork into a bigger and better one. ‘It’s about improving the product.’
As for anyone improving on the career record of Walsh, that’ll take a lot longer than the next 25 years.