When I say nothing, she sighs. ‘You mustn’t take it lightly, you know. Your riding is brilliant – so natural, so effortless. You were meant to ride; some things are just meant to be.’ Then, ‘How could you not want to be a jockey and be so fucking good at it?’
‘Don’t swear,’ I say. ‘I don’t swear. I want this to be an eloquent book.’
‘OK,’ she says after a touch of pause, ‘I think I can manage eloquent.’
A moment later: ‘Do you honestly not swear?’
‘No,’ I say. ‘I don’t swear, I didn’t drink till I was thirty, I don’t smoke, I don’t gamble, I don’t lie.’
She shakes her head then. ‘I’m not writing your book unless you are perfectly honest with me, Declan Murphy. Everybody has sins.’
She’s right, you know. The part about how some things are meant to be.
Her writing is my riding.
My Declan
They say lightning comes before thunder and thunder comes before the storm.
This is the natural order of things, nature’s way of giving warning before disaster strikes.
On Monday, 2 May 1994, there was no such warning. The sky was blue, the sun shone bright. The thunder didn’t come, and neither did the storm.
But the lightning did, even in the middle of the glorious sunshine.
And when that lightning struck, it struck with a vengeance. Little arcs of light danced across the roof of 5 Bank Place and then they all converged, to strike at its very heart.
At 1.45 p.m. on Monday, 2 May, my father, Tommy Murphy, walked through the kitchen of our home, at 5 Bank Place, where my mother was engrossed in baking her third batch of bread. He stopped for an imperceptible second, and then said casually, almost in passing, ‘Mam, it’s the last big race of the season. Declan’s riding the favourite, I’m just going to put the television on.’
This was his way of asking my mother to watch the racing with him. He knew she had little interest in the sport, so he never asked explicitly.
Maura looked up from her dough and nodded. Every married couple has their own particular and idiosyncratic way of understanding one another. Tommy and Maura understood each other perfectly.
Five minutes later, at 1.50 p.m., Tommy settled himself comfortably into his favourite armchair and switched on the television. Tommy was content. Sitting in the chair made him happy – it occupied pride of place in the Murphy household, positioned strategically so that it was both directly in front of the TV as well as closest to the fireplace that bathed the room in warmth and light on many a chilly night.
Tommy was happy for another reason. There was nothing he enjoyed more than watching his son on TV, ghosting yet another winner past the finishing line, and into the annals of racing glory.
For the fact remained that Tommy Murphy was immensely proud of his youngest son. So much so, that the residents of the little town of Hospital (Irish: An tOspidéal, named after the crusading Knights Hospitaller) had become quite accustomed to the sight of him walking down the street, newspaper open, stopping to show people the photographs, as he declared in paternal delight, ‘My Declan did this’ or ‘My Declan did that’.
To Tommy, the specifics of the ‘this’ or ‘that’ were of little relevance; the fact that it was ‘My Declan’ doing the ‘this’ or ‘that’ was what filled his heart with joy.
It was, My Declan.
Always, My Declan.
At 1.55 p.m., he focused his attention on the TV just as the jockeys began cantering down to the start. He could pick out his son straight away, even from a distance. There was something about the way he sat on a horse that made him easy to spot.
Just then, Maura Murphy walked into the sitting room, considerably less animated than her husband. She was a petite woman, with a kind face and a quiet, soft-spoken demeanour.
If anyone believed that watching three sons perform the same death-defying feat for a living had hardened her in any way, they couldn’t be more wrong. When any of her boys were racing, she preferred not to watch, opting instead to go for a walk. When she did stay home, she watched each race while holding her breath, releasing it only with a ‘Thanks be to God’ when it was over. And so, as far as Maura was concerned, it mattered less if her sons won or lost as long as they were still on the horse’s back when they finished the race.
Today was no different. She sat down reluctantly on the edge of the chair, hands together, fingers linked.
At 2 p.m. sharp, the Crowther Homes Swinton Handicap Hurdle began, as a field of eighteen ambitious, talented, seriously competitive jockeys battled for distinction.
As the race progressed, Tommy kept his eyes fixated on the figure in the red silks towards the back of the field, riding – in his characteristic style – a patient race. But Tommy knew he would pounce in the end, when the time was right. It was the way his son always rode, with his head – a clever rider. And so it was hard to contain the excitement in his voice when he spoke, ‘He’s going to win, my Declan is. He’s going to win.’
‘I’ve put the kettle on,’ Maura said by way of reply, as if announcing the banality of the task would somehow cement her disinterest in her son’s potential victory.
Precisely 3 minutes and 27 seconds into the race, on a racecourse 25 miles outside the city of Liverpool, a horse crashed into the last hurdle.
Even as the Irish sunbeams crept cheerfully across the room and the smell of freshly baked soda bread filled the air, a mother and a father watched their TV screen in horror as their son plummeted headfirst into the turf and then, within seconds, appeared to be kicked in the side of the head by an advancing horse.
Tommy gasped, a low, raspy noise coming from the bottom of his throat.
Maura got up and left the room without a word.
And the kettle started to boil.
Barney Curley
It all began with a man.
There are those we meet during the course of our lives who shape our destiny.
Sometimes, these are the people we are most conscious of. Other times, they are just an idea.
I first met him on a Saturday night in the spring of 1984, sitting on the sofa of my living room. I was leading amateur jockey in Ireland at the time, all of seventeen years old. He was on the other side of my TV screen – tough, inscrutable, intelligent – star of The Late Late Show.
At this time, I was in my final year at school and every Saturday night, as a matter of course, I would go to the disco in either Galbally or Ballylanders or Kilballyowen with my friends John Farrell and Gerry Gallagher. Purely by chance, the night in question happened to be that rare one time when I didn’t end up going out with my friends. And so, much against my adolescent will, I was subjected to The Late Late Show by my mother, who watched it religiously every Saturday night.
When you think about the fact that we had only two TV channels in the whole of the country at the time, RTÉ 1 and RTÉ 2, you will understand why The Late Late Show was such a phenomenon. The presenter, Gay Byrne, was a renowned, well-respected public figure, and whether or not it was intended this way, the show had become a forum where previously taboo social-interest topics were discussed openly, along with book reviews, music acts and guest visits from famous and interesting people – politicians, actors, authors and others with stories to tell.
Even then, he was a controversial figure – shrewd, outspoken and articulate, the perfect foil to the charismatic Gay Byrne – and though I had started off watching the show reluctantly, the dynamic duo had me hooked. He was being featured on the show because he had just successfully raffled his mansion in Mullingar and was talking about the gambles he had pulled off – some of the biggest betting coups in racing history.
I sat glued to the television, awestruck, filled with admiration and wonder. Here was a man who did his own thing, kept his own counsel. He had originally studied to become a Jesuit priest. Now he was one of the most famed people in racing, a legend of a punter. He had successfully outsmarted the system in ways that
no one could even imagine, let alone execute, and all entirely legally. All of this struck a chord within me; I was totally, completely fascinated.
He went on to tell Gay Byrne that he had decided to move to England, and that he was taking all his horses with him. Then, he said – and my ears pricked up like a horse’s – ‘I’m going to take the best jockey that I consider in Ireland or England to ride them.’
Now, here’s the thing about me, about my life, the fundamental truth that might surprise you, even shock you, and now’s as good a time as any to tell you, and it is this: in all my life, I have never, ever harboured any ambition of making a career out of racing horses. There, I’ve said it. I didn’t ever want to be a jockey, and this truth hasn’t changed from the moment I got on my first horse to the moment I got off my last. It was a glorious hobby. I was riding for fun. And, for me, that’s all there was to it.
But on hearing him make that remark on The Late Late Show, it sparked something within me. I remember saying to my mother, without even thinking about it, the words tumbling out almost as an automatic reflex, ‘If I were ever to ride horses, I’d love to ride them for him.’
Why would I say this, you ask, a young boy of seventeen who had no interest in becoming a career jockey? What was it about this man that drew me to him in this way?
I don’t know, is my honest answer. How can you say what’s in a man? Only that whatever there was in him, I was fascinated by it. It was as simple as that. If he sold chickens, I would have wanted to sell chickens for him. It so happened that he needed someone to ride horses, and I could ride horses. And I could ride them as good as anyone else.
And so it began with a man.
A man who was unusual. A man who was ingenious. A man who was cleverer than anyone I could think of. A man who was like nobody I’d met before, like a character out of a novel or a movie – only he was real.
A man who changed my life.
That man was Barney Curley.
I was born Declan Joseph Murphy on 5 March 1966, to Tommy Murphy and Maura Murphy (née McCann).
The second youngest of eight, I was a precocious child, eager to learn, eager to absorb, ever-ready for a challenge, but always very much in control. There was a self-assurance about me even at a young age, a quiet confidence that somehow gave the impression that I was older than my years. Much later, in an interview for Reader’s Digest, my father would say of me, ‘When Declan was eight years old, he spoke like an adult.’
As a child, I was intuitive and self-aware; I knew what I could do and what I couldn’t, but when I believed I could do something, I generally did it. I was sensitive and shy on the inside, but outwardly, I came across as fearless, unfazed by it all.
I believe that the nucleus of who we are, as people, rarely ever changes. Because as much as I am a product of the experiences that have shaped me, I still believe that at the core, who I am today, my way of being, has always stayed true to the child I once was. I am still a deeply instinctive person, whether in my interactions with people or horses; my first impressions are rarely wrong. Trust and loyalty are sacrosanct to me, and when I offer someone my friendship, it usually lasts a lifetime.
This is the way I approached horses, it is the way I approached racing, and it is the way I approach life. It is the only way I know.
Growing up in rural Limerick amidst green, open spaces, horses were a natural part of my childhood. My father, an engineer for the local waterworks, was an avid follower of the sport but never rode himself. My uncle Mikey did, however, as did most of my brothers and my sister Kathleen, who would end up being as good as, if not better than, the rest of us.
Horses and ponies were part of the family – how many we had at any given time depended largely on how much space we had to look after them. But my childhood wouldn’t have been the same without them: Barney, Roger, Misty, Lightning – my first ponies, my first teachers and my first friends.
My earliest proper recollection of horses goes back to Strawberry, the very first pony my family owned. If you were to think of a white canvas, flecked all over with red-brown strawberry shapes, and stretched over the body of a horse, that was the very aptly named Strawberry for you. He was a big, strong-willed character, who had been an excellent show-jumping pony in his early life. We used him as a workhorse – my older brothers Laurence and Pat used to ride him and he would tow the cart to deliver firewood all around the village.
I had probably just started walking when I first became aware of Strawberry, but it is amazing how much of some things one can remember (and how little of others), and he stands out in my mind as the first introduction my big blue toddler eyes had to the wide world of equestrian wonderment.
It was maybe only a couple of years later, when I was about four years old, that I scrambled aboard my first pony to ride for fun. And what fun it was! My older brothers and sisters were already riding by now, so it was almost a rite of passage that I would join them on horseback, as soon as I possibly could. The curious thing with us, even as we grew older, is that we were never taught to ride, we learnt to do it ourselves. It was a normal part of everyday life; we rode horses like kids in other parts of the world ride bicycles – we would ride for pleasure, for the sheer joy of it.
Kathleen and I used to have races around the field, imagining we were riding in the Grand National, and our ponies were Red Rum and Ben Nevis. Or sometimes they were L’Escargot and Little Wolf – every horse that was on the television at the time, they were them! And when the Dublin Horse Show was on, we would pretend to be Eddie Macken and Paul Darragh, representing Ireland in show-jumping. We would hop up on two ponies, bareback and no bridles, and they would gallop down to the end of the field under the trees, where one of us would fall off and the other would be declared the winner!
Later, when I moved on to more sophisticated riding and was first shown how to use a saddle, I actually remember not understanding why people used saddles at all – it seemed so much more natural just to ride bareback. That was the way we all rode, starting out – no saddle, no bridle, just a head collar with a piece of rope tied to each side. It was mad, but that was the fun of it for us.
Looking back, I realize just how much I learnt from those early days of riding ponies – it really served to hone my natural instinct for handling horses. Sometimes, when you don’t have the luxury of formal instruction, you don’t overthink things, you just rely on ‘feel’. All the time, you’re talking to the pony, you’re working it out between yourselves – how to stay on, how to get him to keep you on; the unspoken communication. This would prove such a valuable lesson later on in my life when I was out there riding racehorses at big races – it didn’t matter really, the enormity of the event, the key to success was exactly the same. Instinct, intuition, judgement. Back to basics.
Once, when I was ten years old, my father took me to the horse races at Tipperary Racecourse, which is just a few miles from where we lived. My second-oldest brother, Pat, was already a jockey by this time, and my other brother Eamon was successfully racing ponies. At the track we met pony trainer Christy Doherty and, mistaking me for my brother Eamon, he looked at me and to my surprise and delight said, ‘Eamon, would you ride my pony on Sunday?’ My father had stepped away for a minute, and I thought it the funniest thing in the world to pretend to be my brother, so I shrugged and I grinned and I said, ‘Sure!’
On that Sunday, my father dropped me off at Newcastle West, where I jumped in the car with Christy Doherty and, with the pony, String of Pearls, safely in the trailer behind us, we set off for County Cork. It was when we were about halfway through our two-hour journey that the trainer stopped the car at the side of the road – there was nothing around us for as far as the eye could see – next to a gate that opened out on to a field. He then led the pony out of the trailer, took her into the field and let her have a long roll in the grass! He explained to me that a roll in the grass was as good as a stone of oats – it spoke volumes about the wellbeing of a horse. It was at
this point, while String of Pearls was having a good old roll in a field in the middle of nowhere, that Christy Doherty started to realize I wasn’t Eamon. He stopped mid-conversation, leaned forward, squinted at my face and asked, ‘Are you Eamon?’
‘No,’ I replied truthfully, ‘I’m Declan.’
He told me then that he was very sorry but he couldn’t risk letting me ride his pony because of course I had never ridden competitively before. I was disappointed, naturally – I thought I would have really enjoyed this race – but I said, ‘Sure, no problem, could I come along anyway?’
When we arrived at the races, I wandered around, taking in the atmosphere – the buzz, the banter, the boisterous laughter. It felt so vibrant, so electrifying. I wished I was participating in the excitement rather than merely spectating, but by now Christy Doherty had already found a more experienced rider for his pony. As luck would have it, however, I overheard Bosco McMahon at one of the horseboxes saying that they needed a rider for a pony in the 14.2hh race – the same race that I’d been hoping to ride as Eamon. So I pulled on the most earnest face I could conjure up, told them I’d ridden many winners before, when of course I’d never raced before in my life, and got myself on the pony.
Whether it was skill, fate, or plain dumb luck, I will never know, but there I was, racing my first pony, The Rake, in wellingtons and a borrowed helmet, and I won, beating the pony that I was taken to the races to ride. My win surprised trainers and the other competitors, who couldn’t believe that a ten-year-old child who had never raced before had actually walked off with the prize. For me, it was my first taste of victory, and I was on top of the world.
The only thing sweeter than winning the race was the look on Christy Doherty’s face as it happened; that still makes me laugh. He could never say my name properly, he always called me ‘Del-can’. He walked up to me that day, after the event, and said, ‘Oh, Del-can, you should have rode my pony!’ ‘It’s Declan,’ I remember saying to him, smiling innocently, ‘not Del-can, but Declan.’ And from then on and for evermore, in Christy Doherty’s eyes, I went from being ‘Del-can, the boy who had never ridden before’ to ‘Declan, the boy who could ride’.
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