My sporting life was killing me
Grand National champ reveals his daily battle with weight forced him to quit glittering career
FOR a man who had achieved the ultimate horse racing prize of a Grand National win, it seemed incredible that something as simple as a dish of lamb and vegetables could bring it all crashing to an end. But the modest dinner, washed down with a large glass of water and followed by a small dessert, proved to be the last straw that broke the camel’s back for champion jockey Ryan Mania.
The following morning last November, he stood shocked and disbelieving on the bathroom scales – with a race coming up, he had just 24 hours to shed half a stone. There followed virtual starvation and searing hot baths to ‘sweat off’ the excess and reach the racecourse at Sedgefield weighing just 10st 4lb. ‘Not easy,’ he says, ‘when you’re 5ft 11inches tall.’
Yet despite his best efforts he had only managed to shed a single pound. ‘That was the moment I realised I was killing my body, expecting to win races dehydrated and malnourished. I just said to myself: “To hell with it, I can’t be bothered with this!”’
Sensationally, Mania quit on the spot, citing weight issues – and forcing the owners of the horse he was due to ride that day to find a last-minute replacement. It was a month before his 25th birthday and the end of an illustrious career which, although it had lasted a mere 18 months, had taken him to the very pinnacle of his sport.
The jockey had rocketed to fame after his Grand National victory with Auroras Encore in April 2013, which he started at odds of 66-1. At only 23, he was one of the youngest riders to win the Aintree race and the first Scot to claim victory in 117 years.
But he adds: ‘I’d had enough of sucking ice cubes to stop the hunger pangs and fooling my body into thinking I was eating food. I know there’s a whole weight issue with fashion models, but no one really looks at what jockeys have to go through. It’s the same thing, if not slightly worse, because we have to go out and ride a ton of horse, not just walk down a catwalk.
‘I would crave food all the time. It was the first thing on my mind. I would worry about going out for dinner and putting on weight, I had no life. A lot of jockeys don’t struggle with their weight, but I’m taller than most and at an instant disadvantage because of it. When you go out for a meal and wake up the next morning to discover you’ve put on half a stone, it just fries your head. I’d had enough. My body was saying: “You can’t keep starving yourself like this”.’
Four months on, his life could not be more different from the high-pressure stakes of the racing circuit.
Leafing through Horse and Hound in the New Year, he spotted a job advert for a ‘kennel huntsman’ with the Braes of Derwent Hunt in Northumberland, and applied, sending off his CV like any regular would-be employee.
Did they looked startled when the Grand National winner turned up for the interview? Laughing, he says: ‘They knew who I was. But what not a lot of people know is that I’ve been doing this job, working with hounds, for a long time anyway. ‘When I was racing fulltime, I couldn’t do it as much, but in the summer, in my down time, I loved spending time with them.
‘Horse racing gets quite intense. It’s not an easy life. If you’re not sweating or exercising to lose weight, even when you do well on the course, there’s always someone who will say: “That was rubbish”.
I would crave food all the time... it was the first thing on my mind
There’s something non-judgmental about hounds.’
Which is just as well, because he’s now in charge of 80 of them, with sole responsibility for their health and welfare – even down to the more menial task of cleaning out their kennels. He also walks them – all of them, at once – which he admits can be a challenge, as one or two are ‘more mischievous’ than the others.
Many might find it difficult to comprehend but it’s clear this ex-jockey, from Galashiels in Selkirkshire, finds caring for his hounds seven days a week as exhilarating as he once did thundering home to victory on a thoroughbred racehorse.
Without any hint of regret at turning his back on the more glamorous world of horse racing, he says of his new life: ‘With the hounds, you need to have that connection and understanding and trust with each other that you do with a horse. Hounds look to you for help and direction. It’s a complete bond, like riding a racehorse. They see me now like their dad and know I’m in charge.
‘Don’t get me wrong, some can drive you a bit crazy. But in a way, although I find this more relaxing than horse racing, it can be more intense. When I was racing, I was always bringing my work home, having to watch everything I ate and couldn’t switch off.
‘Now I’m not having to worry about keeping fit or driving round the country to races, but it’s a big responsibility being in charge of the welfare of 80 hounds.’
He has never been happier, and weighs in now at a healthy 11-and-ahalf stone. At his height, he could put on another stone in weight and still be within the average UK size for a male. Last week, he went with his family to a restaurant where there was a Chinese buffet. But despite the promise of being able to ‘eat as much as you like’, he was forced to admit defeat earlier than he’d thought.
‘It’s a funny thing,’ he says. ‘Food’s now the last thing on my mind, whereas when I as racing it was the first thing. For me, it was all about when I could eat next, because I was so hungry all the time.’
Nowadays, he’s not just ‘dad’ to a pack of hounds – he has an 18-monthold son, Rowan, with whom he’s enjoying spending more time.
The toddler already has his own Shetland pony. His father was put on one for the first time by his parents at the age of three, and Rowan is enjoying the thrill of riding before he can even talk.
‘He loves it,’ says his father. ‘He’s walking now and just learning to talk, but he has his own little pony. He’s loved it from the start.’
But given his own experience of the intense pressures jockeys find themselves under, particularly with weight and diet, would he try to talk his son out of following in his footsteps, if that was what he wanted?
Curiously, he answers in the negative: ‘If he wants to become a jockey eventually, I would give him all the help and advice I could. But I don’t know if that’s what he will want to do. I wouldn’t push him towards it and I might suggest he would be better off trying something else.’
But as Mania talks about racing, something remarkable happens. It’s as if five months away from the hot seat has helped clear his thoughts and he is suddenly starting to feel the passion for it once more.
‘I’ve had some amazing times,’ he reflects. ‘And if Rowan did go down that route, hopefully he might win the Grand National one day, too.’
Mania has walked away from racing before. In 2011, he took a six month sabbatical following the death of his friend, mentor and trainer Peter Monteith. But he resumed riding later in the year – and won the Grand National on the Sue Smith-trained horse Auroras Encore.
There was more high drama 24 hours later, when Mania had to be airlifted to hospital following a fall in Hexham, Northumberland, in which he suffered a neck injury. But he was soon back racing, and went on to have 52 more winners that season.
Last November, however, when he announced his retirement, he was adamant that he no longer got ‘a b buzz’ out of winning and was ‘disil-lusioned’ by it. He’d won four races t the previous week and found little pleasure in that incredible achievement.
He had his doubters, of course – many incredulous that he could walk away from it completely at such a young age. Now, it seems, the 25year-old is perhaps showing signs of a rethink and a promising hint that he might not be quite finished with horse racing yet.
He confesses: ‘I do miss it. I always lo loved riding, whether it was a big race or a little race. There was nothin ing like it, and I’d like to say a huge t thankyou to all those trainers who g gave me the chance.
‘It would be great to be able to go back. I may have won the Grand National but I’d never won at Chel- tenham, so I would still like to have done that.’
His contract with the hunt is for a year but he adds enigmatically: ‘Never say never. If I somehow got a good diet and managed to get my weight down, I wouldn’t write it off – though I don’t know if my body will allow me.’
In the meantime, he has been dabbling with some TV and media work. And today, two weeks before this year’s Grand National, he has a very special reunion with Auroras Encore after months apart.
Laughingly he doubts if the horse will even remember him, but the Grand National winner has clearly had a profound effect on his rider.
Mania admits he still gets emotional each time he sees the horse who carried him to his greatest triumph: ‘It’s hard to explain. When I walk down that passageway in the stables and see his head hanging over the doorway, I get a tear in my eye.
‘We spent a lot of hours together and there was a connection between us because of it. He gave me so much that day. He was so brave and so strong. He’ll be my hero forever.’
One of the perks of winning the greatest prize in British racing is that all surviving equine winners are paraded proudly around the paddock each year prior to the big race, with Auroras Encore’s former rider watching from an armchair.
But Mania’s many fans will be hoping this is the last time he’ll watch the National on TV – and that next year, just maybe, he’ll be back in the saddle again.
Now I don’t have to worry about keeping fit or driving to the races