Centaur

by Declan Murphy

  They were relentless. It seemed at one stage that I couldn’t take part in any race without being called before the stewards for something or other. All this time, I had remained unfazed, but the injustice of repeatedly being the proverbial goat of Leviticus was beginning to affect me adversely.

  One time at Sedgefield, I was accused of throwing a race I didn’t win because the stewards argued that I hadn’t ‘tried hard enough’.

  Twelve days prior, I had broken my collarbone while riding at Towcester. Solvent was my comeback ride at the Road Show Novices’ Hurdle at Sedgefield – my first race since the injury.

  On the day, my collarbone felt healed. Happily, I had been passed fit to ride and, being the eager young jockey that I was, I was determined to do my best. Solvent was 4/1 second favourite and my instructions from Barney Curley had been to lie in about fourth or fifth position and make my effort after the second last.

  So I had ridden out and my collarbone had been fine, without undue stress, but right from the start, I had been unable to keep Solvent well covered because the horse had been racing too freely. Then, when Solvent pecked at the first, I jolted my shoulder so badly that the bone cracked again.

  The pain was so bad that my left arm became totally disabled from the fourth last. Despite my best efforts, we lost our place coming out of the back straight, falling to sixth by the last flight. It was not until the run-in that I used my right hand to compensate and we ended up finishing fourth, a length and three-quarters behind the winner.

  To my shock, I was fined £150 on the spot by local stewards for breaching Rule 151 (ii) which deals with ‘giving a horse a full opportunity to win or obtain the best possible placing’.

  Adamant to prove my innocence, I went to the hospital on my way back from the races that very day and came home with a strapped-up arm and X-rays that clearly showed my collarbone had cracked again. In my mind, this proved beyond reasonable doubt that I had been in unbearable pain from the point in the race at which it broke.

  But even medical evidence proved insufficient. In fact, to my astonishment, it only served to fan the flames. I was summoned to an inquiry by the Jockey Club’s Disciplinary Committee at Portman Square, where I was accused of breaking Rule 201 (v), which deals with ‘deliberately misleading or endeavouring to mislead racing officials’. What they were now trying to imply was that, if my collarbone was indeed cracked as the X-ray showed, I shouldn’t have been passed fit to ride in the first place, and that I had somehow misled the doctor on course at Sedgefield.

  Barney Curley was so furious by the accusations directed at me that he employed Alan Walls, a top London lawyer, to represent me. Mr Walls tried to plead my case, explaining that leading into and on the day of the race my collarbone had appeared fully healed. It was only during the course of the race, when the horse had started pulling hard, that the injury had been aggravated, causing it to flare up again. But our argument fell on deaf ears. They had already made up their minds.

  At the same time, in a separate incident, the hard-talking, high-rolling Barney Curley lost his licence for two years under the notoriously broad Rule 220 (iii) for allegedly ‘causing serious damage to the interests of British racing’ with his characteristically outspoken remarks. Unsurprisingly, after he threatened to take the Jockey Club to the High Court, he was returned his licence a mere 101 days later.

  I proved less fortunate. I was still only learning the ropes of a new trade in a new country, and I had neither the resources nor the smarts that Barney did.

  My riding licence was taken away for nearly four months, from 11 June until 30 September. The racing season in England would start back up at the beginning of August, and the suspension meant that I would miss the summer season in Ireland and the first two months of racing in England.

  The unfairness of the Sedgefield incident shook my faith.

  I got on an aeroplane to Los Angeles and within two weeks I had sat the exam to secure a place at UCLA, while riding track-work for Charlie Whittingham to help pay for my education. ‘You are too good a talent not to ride horses,’ the great man had said to me. But in my mind, it was over. I had never wanted to be a jockey in the first place, and the unwelcome environment the stewards had created for me, wittingly or unwittingly, was enough to rattle anyone’s resolve. I had tried to soldier on, but I had finally had enough.

  It seemed the perfect opportunity to make my move towards a different future.

  And then Barney Curley called me, fresh from winning the hearing on his racing ban. ‘Come back to England when your suspension is over,’ he said to me, ‘and I will provide you with a winner.’

  I was conflicted. I was at the intersection of two paths and while my head was urging me down one road, my heart was tugging me down the other. This was my moment to break free from expectation and pursue my dreams for myself, and yet I felt an immense sense of loyalty to Barney Curley. Because this is the thing about me – no matter how bad things are, I never let people down. From the start, the bedrock of the relationship between Barney and me had always been mutual respect for one another’s abilities and minds. And I couldn’t allow myself to betray that trust. After all, this was a man who had publicly said about me, ‘If he ever decided to stop riding, I would seriously consider stopping training. There might be as good a jockey around, but none better.’

  And despite such high praise, I knew, as did those closest to me, that Barney’s admiration for my abilities came second to a subtler, more powerful emotion: responsibility. He shouldered the responsibility for bringing me over from Ireland and his affection towards me extended far deeper than it would have in a strictly mentor–protégé capacity. I had touched some part of Barney’s impenetrable heart and he treated me like a second son.

  So I agreed to return, only because Barney Curley had asked me to. But I didn’t intend to stay for long. In my head, I believed riding Barney’s horse would fulfil my obligation to him and then I would return to California, a free man, to live my life.

  In the summer of 1989 I went back to England and rode Barney Curley’s horse. As he had predicted, the horse was a winner. He was called Above All Hope.

  It was a name of great significance because shortly thereafter, for me, all hope did come alive.

  My return to England proved to be a turning point in my career. I had decided, almost with certainty, that I wasn’t going to stay for long. My plan was to return to America to continue the education that I had always longed to pursue. And so I began to care less about what others thought of me; I began to care more about what I thought of myself. Over the next period, with the solid support of trainers David Ringer, Geoff Hubbard, Neville Callaghan, Phillip Mitchell, Mark Tompkins and, of course, the continuing support of Barney Curley, I began to define and own a riding style that was quintessentially mine.

  A typical ‘Declan Murphy ride’ involved settling my mount to travel economically in his cruising speed, getting him jumping comfortably and in rhythm with his stride pattern, and then gradually, almost stealthily, advancing him towards the finish line before finally releasing the power I had reserved, to pounce. This was the point at which Barney Curley would say about me, ‘He could drop a horse in twenty lengths further than you’d think he should do, but somehow he would always arrive there to win.’

  I was never intimidated or fazed by a situation. It didn’t matter how big a race it was, I didn’t succumb to pressure – I didn’t even feel it. My self-confidence was beginning to surface. This played into my hands and I began to win. My first big victory came in the form of the Irish Champion Hurdle in 1989. I rode Kingsmill, my first winner for the illustrious Tommy Stack, forever part of the Red Rum legend. Later on, in 1993, I would go on to win the Irish Champion Hurdle for the second time and repay Neville Callaghan for his loyalty in those early years, by winning on Royal Derbi.

  After the 1989 Irish Champion Hurdle, things began to turn upwards. There was a casualness in my approach that seemed to disarm people. The more I be
gan to win, the more I began to get noticed. The more I began to get noticed, the more the stewards began to let up. Then, in what seemed a watershed moment in my relationship with the authorities, Bruce Hobbs, senior steward of the Jockey Club (and former Grand National winner), waved a white flag. At his house, over dinner – well behind enemy lines – he said to me, ‘You are too good to give up on this. They are trying to get at Barney through you. It will pass, stick with it and your talent will shine through bright. You will rise to the top.’

  It seemed, I was good enough.

  Bruce Hobbs’s words were oddly clairvoyant. Very few get to the very top.

  I consider myself extremely fortunate that over the next few years, I was able to carve a place for myself in this elite category. Routinely referred to as having ‘the best pair of hands in the business’, I rode with startlingly accurate judgement of pace, fuelled by a combination of instinct, attitude and ability. I began to be recognized, lauded and coveted for my seemingly effortless riding style – somehow I made it look easy, and yet I was able to consistently deliver winners.

  Race-riding is an art form; a dangerous, demanding art form. To do it professionally and to do it well requires incredible skill. It needs courage and control, intelligence, endurance, strength, perseverance. It needs that intangible something – mysterious and marvellous, impossible to define. It takes years to perfect and yet, somehow for me, it seemed to ‘just happen’, so much so that my brother Eamon once said, ‘I was very keen, but Declan was very good.’

  There was a thrill in winning, in being that good at something. It was addictive. But be that as it may, I could never see myself doing it for ever. I had other plans for life. Life had other plans for me. Racing just kept getting in the way.

  And then, once again, fate played its extraordinary hand. I met two people who would forever rewrite the pages of my future, professionally and personally.

  Their names were Josh Gifford and Joanna Park.

  Each, in their own way, would take my life in a different direction.

  A new direction – not right, not left.

  But straight up.

  And, with that, would emerge a new dawn.

  My meteoric rise would begin.

  It seemed, I would be good enough.

  Four Years

  I remember one of the first conversations I have with Ami. It is the moment I tell her that I cannot remember four years of my life. It so happens that I choose to let her in on this little detail after we have agreed to write the book. I haven’t consciously not told her earlier. It just sort of evolves when she asks about the photos on my walls; she wants to know the story behind each one. I tell her that the photographs are of great significance to me because essentially they are my memory. She looks bemused, asks what I mean. So I tell her. Our exchange goes something like this:

  Her: ‘What? Gone? All gone? All of it?’

  Me: ‘Gone.’

  Her: ‘Who else knows about this?’

  Me: ‘No one.’

  Her: ‘Family? Friends? Racing people?’

  Me: ‘No one.’

  Her: ‘And now, you’re prepared to tell everyone?’

  Me: ‘Yes.’

  Her: ‘Which four years?’

  Me: ‘The four years right before my accident.’

  Her: ‘When you were at your most successful – at the zenith of your career? Oh, perfect.’

  Me: (laughing)

  Her: ‘Trust me, this is many things. But funny is definitely not what I’m feeling right now.’

  Me: (laughing harder)

  Her: ‘You want me to tell your story when you can’t tell me your story?’

  Me: ‘I’ll help you. We’ll do it together. Don’t worry.’

  Her: ‘Don’t worry?’

  She invents a new word while writing the book – ‘Declanism’, she calls it; the idealism that is Declan.

  The Rise

  We all have our secrets.

  And I circle back, once again, to mine: I never wanted to be a jockey.

  My career was incidental.

  But the mere fact that I was a jockey meant I was going to be the best jockey I could possibly be.

  It doesn’t matter what I do in my life.

  It doesn’t matter that it may not be what I want to do.

  If I do it, I will do it to the very best of my ability.

  That is the essence of who I am.

  So I carried on the charade.

  In the summer of 1989, when I returned from California to ride Barney Curley’s Above All Hope, I had almost fully decided to give up riding and go back to America to continue my education.

  I felt I had repaid my debt of gratitude to Barney Curley. I had agreed to leave Ireland with him when nobody thought I should, I had satisfied my own curiosity of him, I had stuck with him through thick and thin, and I had genuinely learnt more from him than I would have with anyone else. So, I was ready at this point to spread my wings – and go.

  Exactly around this time, my presence piqued the interest of one of racing’s most revered professionals, the fabled Josh Gifford.

  I was still riding Barney Curley’s horses at this time, but I had also been riding for several other trainers – Tommy Stack, David Ringer, Geoff Hubbard, Neville Callaghan, Phillip Mitchell, Mark Tompkins, to name a few. Until this point, all of them had reached out to me through Barney, either out of courtesy or because there was no other way to get hold of me – I didn’t have my number in the book.

  In the winter of 1990, Mr Josh Gifford called me direct. He phoned me up, out of the blue, and said, ‘Would you ride all my horses at Ascot this Saturday?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, because of who he was. And I did.

  After that, over the next several weeks, I started riding most of the Josh Gifford horses. Shortly thereafter, Josh Gifford’s stable jockey Richard Rowe retired and, amidst a sea of press speculation, I got offered what many would consider to be one of the best jobs in the country – the opportunity to be his new stable jockey.

  Do I go for it?

  Behind every story lies another story, and so it is with this one:

  It was the year 1983, I was seventeen years old.

  Francis O’Callaghan ran the quarantine in Ireland for shipping horses abroad. He was from my village of Hospital so our families knew each other well and I would go ride for him every now and then, to help exercise the horses before they were sent abroad.

  If anyone in the racing world truly understood me, it was Francis. He knew I didn’t want to be a jockey, but he also knew that I loved horses, I was good with them, they were good with me. While many others struggled with the confusion this seemed to create, he embraced it. He could tell there was something different about me, about my ability to ride, and his support and encouragement for me was unwavering, even at that young age. Francis O’Callaghan went on to follow my career with great pride and I will always look upon him as my first mentor.

  One time, Francis took me up to Kilmallock cinema, to watch the movie Champions. In the movie, it is Josh Gifford who trains Aldaniti, the horse that the courageous Bob Champion rides to win the 1981 Grand National after he recovers from his illness. I watched the movie, a starstruck teenager. It was my first cinematic experience, and the whole thing affected me greatly – the dark, quiet room, the plush chairs that I could sink into, the deep-red velvet curtains opening to reveal the huge screen, the lifelike images, the colours, the clarity, the music. I could have lost myself in there. And then, of course, there was the story itself. I was so touched, so inspired by Bob Champion’s story, by the courage and the bravery of both man and horse. And Josh Gifford came out a total hero – I had so much respect for the trainer for believing in and sticking by his jockey when he could have easily found someone else. Everything moved me deeply, the experience, the story, even the shots of the Sussex Downs where Josh Gifford kept his horses left me breathless – how glorious England looked!

  Now, this same man – this ma
n of the silver screen – had offered me the job of stable jockey at his powerful Findon yard. He looked even more of a character in real life than Edward Woodward had portrayed him in the movie. The hat, the bushy eyebrows, he was larger than life, a caricature of himself, a brilliant man of deep convictions, a legendary trainer.

  Any way you chose to look at it, for a jockey, riding for a trainer of Josh Gifford’s calibre was a huge privilege.

  So, do I go for it?

  To the outside world, I was Declan: the realist, the pragmatist, the perfectionist …

  On the inside, I am Declan: the dreamer, the romantic, the idealist …

  I go for it.

  And from here, my ascendancy began.

  It was a marked phase in my career – it was The Rise.

  Race-riding is all about speed. The ability to achieve speed on horseback. And the only way to internalize this speed, to make it appear natural, is by ‘feel’. Therein lies the difference between a good jockey and a great jockey: that innate capability to ‘feel’ the horse he is riding. So many of us are corrupted by our conscious state but when you block out the peripheral and you focus more on the ‘feel’, the complete awareness of how the horse moves under you, you transcend this imaginary line – you go from good to great. It really is that simple. As soon as you mount a horse, just cantering a couple of strides, you can learn so much about the animal. Every twitch, every movement means something. And then when you quicken, when you find a horse’s correct cruising speed as you start racing, you feel it too – the rhythm of the stride pattern, the beat of the gallop. If you hear it, if you tune yourself to the same frequency, if your horse wins with something to spare, you’ve got it, it’s yours.

  At this point in my life, I had it, it was mine. The synergy between me and the horses I was riding was unique – horses wanted to jump for me, horses wanted to win for me. I had honed my skill to a point where I had an uncanny ability to judge the pace of a race, to own my speed, and somehow I found myself in the right place at the right time in every race. People began to become aware of me: