For Ruby Walsh, getting back in the saddle at the Galway Races will be a welcome return to the life he never planned but now can’t live without.
Walsh is set to race again at the Galway festival from next Monday after coming back from the 18th major injury of his career.
The Kildare native broke his leg twice in the space of a year, the latest set-back coming after a devastating fall while riding Al Boum Photo at the Cheltenham Festival in March. He hoped to be back sooner but is happy now to have received the all-clear.
“I never looked at it as something to feel down about,” he tells us. “If you a racing, you are going to get injuries. It’s part of life.
“You go back to square one and you start again. It’s not a case of re-motivating yourself.
“You are incapacitated somewhat and then up on crutches for a while. It can be a right pain in the arse but you do what you can.
“It’s my job. It’s my life. It’s what I do. All you are asking when you get injured is, ‘How long will it take until I get back?'”
Getting back to a profession that he never thought about seriously until he was 13 or 14 and, even then, horse-racing what not his first sporting love. Growing up in Kill, County Kildare, Walsh had a wide range of sporting interests.
He played GAA and football in Kill but his true passion was for rugby. Unsurprisingly, given his diminutive frame, Walsh was a scrum-half.
“I played from 8 to 18 with Naas (RFC). It was my first-choice sport growing up. I love rugby and really enjoyed playing it. It’s something I was always passionate about.
“I learned a lot from the game – shaking hands with the opposition after the game and clapping them off the pitch. I learned to win through that sport and while you never wanted to lose, I learned how to be gracious in defeat.
“I was small enough but I always found rugby a cleaner sport to play than GAA, where they’d often get you with the off the ball hits. I played scrum-half and I was never afraid to tackle anybody.”
Walsh would like to think that rugby could have been a sport he’d make a decent fist at if horse-racing had not worked out. But by the age or 16 and 17, that path was already being forged.
“I was never that forward thinking,” the Paddy Power racing ambassador and Paddy Power News columnist admits.
“I was 13 or 14 before I thought that racing was something that I might like to do. It started as a dream but even when I got my first couple of rides, then my first couple of wins, I never had that clear picture that this was going to be my life.
“I’ll tell you when it first became a serious thought in my head. I was filling out my CAO forms (before the Leaving Cert) and I thought, ‘It doesn’t matter what offers I get, I want to be a jockey’.
“That was it. As soon as I took it seriously, I was set. There was never a back-up plan.”
Having legendary trainer Ted Walsh for a father definitely helped but plenty of sons and daughters have tried to take on the family business and found it easier said than done. A fraction make it and a smaller fraction still get as far as Ruby Walsh has done.
It quickly became apparent that the young Walsh had made the right call. He won the Irish amateur title in 1997 and 1998 before turning professional. He has been Irish National Hunt champion jockey on 12 occasions, two Grand Nationals, two Cheltenham Gold Cups and was leading jockey at 11 Cheltenham Festivals between 2004 and 2017.
“I don’t know if I ever had and goals,” he says. “It is all one goal.
“You’re never happy with what you have. You want more. You go along that way into your 30s and, all of a sudden, you’re in your 30s and this is your life.
“I realise that I’ve got more years racing behind me, now, that I do have ahead. There has to be an end at some stage but you’re still out there. You’re still chasing winners.”
That was the focus when Walsh was re-habbing from his leg break. His high profile, family life and commercial commitments meant he could not be as hell-bent as getting back out there as he may have been in his 20s.
“Racing is my life,” he comments. “Horses are all that I know and racing is all I do.
“There was no night courses or going back to college. There was TV work and my work with Paddy Power, The Examiner and Racing UK. And I’ve got four daughters too. It’s great to spend some extra time with them but they’re long days, looking after the kids. If you have some, you’ll know.”
From Monday, though, it is back to what Walsh does best.
The next race. The next win.
No major goals, just one goal.
