Courage incomparable

HORSEMEN routinely leave so many of our other more handsomely rewarded sports stars in the halfpenny place when it comes to guts and daring, and the fearlessness that is demanded from them pretty much every day of the week.

And too often we take all of this for granted.

On the very day that Paris Saint-Germain agreed to pay Brazil’s Neymar a reported €600,000 per week (after tax), in a deal which Arsenal’s Arsene Wenger described as ‘beyond rationality’, Barry Geraghty climbed aboard Tigris River at Ballybrit.

Geraghty had won on the opening day of the Galway Festival – in his first ride back after smashing his arm when falling from Minella Foru in the Irish Grand National last April.

Then, on Thursday, the Meath man claimed his first Galway Hurdle, winning for the owners of 5-1 shot Tigris River a relative pittance of €177,000 compared to the entirely grotesque sums masquerading as market value in world football. The courage of jockeys like Geraghty in turning their backs on horrific injuries and turning up for a day’s work never ceases to astonish.

And in measuring honesty and courage they set the bar at a height that leaves men and women in almost every other sport dizzy looking up at it.