Hugh Cahill Darragh McManus chats to the sports broadcaster about his debut novel which covers his first sporting love: horseracing
In his debut book, sports journalist Hugh Cahill returns to his first sporting love, horseracing. He tells Darragh McManus how it came about
“I’m a life-long horseracing man,” says RTÉ Sports correspondent Hugh Cahill. “I’ve been a fan since I was a child and that grew over time. My parents weren’t into racing; it was more my grandparents on my mother’s side. They got me interested. I used to spend time at their place after school and my grandfather would sit me down to watch a race. He’d tell me which horse he’d backed! So I’d look out for that one.”
The seed had been planted and a love for the sport of kings has stayed with the broadcaster. It helped that his brother and some cousins were “big fans too.” Growing up in Wicklow, the nearest racecourse was Leopardstown in south Dublin and as a teenager, Hugh would attend the famous Christmas festival and other race meetings.
Punchestown was on the agenda as well. When Hugh met his wife, Louise, he adds, “Her father was huge into racing as well. That’s something we bonded over! We’d go to the Curragh fairly regularly now.”
Hugh is the host of RTÉ 2fm’s nightly sports show Game On. He covered the London and Rio Olympics and is RTÉ’s main man for the autumn rugby internationals. Of horseracing, Hugh insists: “I’d have a certain amount of knowledge about it although I’m no expert.”
We think he’s being unduly modest: Cahill speaks clearly, informatively and very passionately about horses. All of his knowledge and experience of horseracing has been parlayed into his debut book Winners, which he hopes, “celebrates the best of Irish horse-racing down the years.”
Subtitled ‘The Horses, the Memories, the Defining Moments’, it’s a beautifully presented hardback, filled with fantastic photos which capture the mud, madness, glory and excitement of the sport.
The meat of the matter, though, is a collection of interviews with some of the best-known jockeys, trainers and owners in Irish racing: Willie Mullins, Jessica Harrington, Ruby Walsh, JP McManus, AP McCoy and many more. Hugh explains: “What I wanted to do was get the thoughts of people in the industry. We can sit down and talk about racing, but I wanted the perspective of those people: the jockeys, trainers and owners. What made their horses so good? What specific things happened on any given day to get them over the line and get the win?
“Generally when they’re being interviewed, it’s just after getting off the horse, or a race is about to start. This book takes more of a considered approach: they can sit down and have time to look back on certain races, why they did things the way they did. You get more detail.”
He had a good idea from the beginning about who he wanted to feature in the book – Hugh describes it as “more of a wish-list than anything at the time, as obviously, we still had to get those people to agree to it.” As it turned out, though, they were all “brilliant with their time. They went out of their way to make time for me, and it couldn’t have happened without that.”
Winners is an ideal stocking-filler for anyone who shares Hugh’s love of racing; the book looks good and is a fascinating insight into a world that is often mysterious to the average punter, while also being a large part of Irish cultural heritage.
“Horse-racing is a huge part of Irish culture,” Hugh says, “and now Horse Racing Ireland has launched a big campaign to attract people who mightn’t be fans to the racecourse, like young people, giving a more social element to the racing. You can see it in Leopardstown on Thursday nights, where they’d have bands playing after the racing and things like that.
“Other places do this too, they’ll have entertainment on the big racing days to try to attract new fans in the door and keep them there. The hope is that once they go in the first place, they’ll buy into the racing element of it too and stick with it.”
Winners is Hugh’s first book, although the idea has been percolating in his mind for quite a while. In the end, once he agreed an outline with the publishers, actually putting it together was pretty fast.
“We met around the end of February,” Hugh says, “with me thinking it’d be published in 2019, but they suggested we get it out for Christmas of this year. So it was quite intense: a five-month turnaround, which isn’t an awful lot. I had to really mill into it, but we got there in the end.” Was it a dream come true to chat with such legendary figures of Irish racing? “Definitely,” Hugh says. “I was so lucky in that they were so receptive to the idea; I couldn’t believe it. Nobody said no, nobody even made it difficult.
“And this was during a busy time of year, with Cheltenham and Aintree and all the rest, but they were all really giving with their time. To sit down with these people, away from the hustle and bustle of the track, allowed them more freedom to express themselves, and go deeper into their memories than you might normally get.”
To sit down with these people, away from the hustle and bustle of the track, allowed them more freedom to express themselves