The cream of Irish racing will be out in force today at the Irish Derby butbehind the glamour is a contest more soul-destroyingthan any race and probably more dangerous too, writes Brian O'Connor, Racing Correspondent
shIt's six years since he retired as one of Ireland's greatest jockeys but Christy Roche can still remember the feeling of dread when he stood on the scales. "Every day I had to work at the weight so much that by the time I got to the races, stood on the scales and made whatever weight I had to do, I used to let out a big sigh of relief that my work was done. Losing the weight was the big thing. Riding the six or seven horses afterwards was the easy part," he recalls.
On the eve of the Budweiser Irish Derby at the Curragh, Roche will think back to glory days in Ireland's biggest and most glamourous race. Assert (1982), St Jovite (1992) and Desert King (1997) were Roche-ridden champions that dominated the Derby. They're happy memories, but the former champion will feel no envy towards the jocks riding tomorrow.
Jump jockeys are rightly credited with having one of the most dangerous jobs in sport. With the bigger men who ride over fences it is a matter of when and not if you get hurt. On average a jockey will take a fall once in every 20 rides, a statistic to concentrate the hardiest of minds.
But for flat jockeys the demons are more subtle. There may not be a dark, brooding fence ahead of them, but in the morning there is always that soul-destroying date with the scales, a date that can send them into the depths of despair with just one shudder of the needle.
The history of racing's rich and glamourous summer game is littered with people who found the terrible struggle with their own bodies too much. Fred Archer, the Lester Piggott of his day in the 19th century, eventually felt so low he blew his brains out. Archer retains his mythical status within the sport, but for today's jockeys the struggle can be just as solitary.
"I never let on in that I had a weight problem, and it was very important that people didn't think I had one. I managed to keep it under wraps because if people think you don't have a problem they will believe you are more healthy and strong and will ride better," Roche says.
"Jockeys are a breed apart because it's only those who can handle all the problems that come with weight who will get to the top. You see Mick Kinane, Johnny Murtagh and Kevin Manning now and you know they are serious men. They have to be."
When the gates for the Derby open up there will be a lot of serious men with only one thing on their minds - and that's getting to the red lollipop a mile and a half away before anyone else. The beauty of the sport is that over that mile and a half there is no hiding place. Theoretically there should be no excuses either. But the combination of horses and jockeys has been bamboozling punters for centuries.
Lester Piggott won the Irish Derby five times, but often the real race was between those who wanted to get "Old Stoneface" on to their horse in the first place. No one knew his value better than Vincent O'Brien, who argued that the best part of having Piggott on his horse was that he didn't have to worry about beating him.
Piggott, the old maestro, had all the gifts of strength and talent, but most of all he had temperament. When it mattered most, he got it wrong less than anyone else, and in the biggest races getting it right is worth millions. One run is all you get in races such as the Derby, so it's vital that it's timed to the best possible advantage.
"It's as much mental as physical," admits Pat Smullen, twice a former champion in Ireland and currently lying second in the table. "In the pressure situations, I like to think I cope with the stress quite well. But my attitude is that there is no point in worrying about it. It doesn't help to get too worked up."
Smullen has proved his big-race temperament with victories such as last year's 2,000 Guineas on Refuse To Bend and three Irish St Legers on Vinnie Roe.
Tall for a flat rider, he has conditioned his body, with the help of a strict diet and daily bouts with the sauna, to be able to ride at 8st 6lbs during the season. But weight loss has to be carefully monitored. Dr Walter Halley, the Turf Club's medical officer, estimates that for every pound lost in the sweat room, an already lean rider loses 5 per cent of his strength. That is no good at all when the end result is supposed to be the ability to to control and steer half a tonne of skittish racehorse. The animal will always win a battle of wills with a jockey if it really wants to. Perched precariously on top, the last thing the human element needs is to feel weak.
To the outsider, it makes for an off-putting cocktail. Hard physical work, severe mental strain, intense competition, and all of this against a backdrop of inevitable danger and the even more inevitable rumble of a hungry stomach. Yet the flow of youngsters wanting to emulate Kieren Fallon and Frankie Dettori continues undaunted.
Colm O'Donoghue was aged just 12 when he made the journey from Buttevant to Fermoy in north Co Cork every weekend before getting on a bus to work at Puddy Mullins's yard in Goresbridge, Co Kilkenny. Now 23, he is one the top apprentices in the country, riding for top trainer Aidan O'Brien. He tasted Group 1 glory at the Curragh on the O'Brien-trained Spartacus two years ago and finished third on Roosevelt in last year's Irish Derby.
"Once I started riding ponies it became like a drug. All I wanted to be was a jockey. It was tunnel vision," O'Donoghue explains. "Conditions now for young jockeys starting off are so much better. When I started off I'd hear stories from the older generation about what it was like for them working in yards. It must have been serious graft. But now we're really looked after.
"I'm sure there are plenty people who will tell you about making better money for five-day weeks, but once you are in this game it is hard to get out. We work for trainers, but they are working for owners and we're all in it together to get the best results."
The only pay-off that really counts, of course, is success, and O'Donoghue has had enough to ensure that the horse drug still courses merrily through his veins.
"I'm lucky in that while I'm not the smallest, I can do 8st 5lbs comfortably," he says. "I might have one meal a day, a nice bit of steak or fish, something good instead of rubbish, but it's not too bad. We do a fair bit of driving as well, maybe 40,000 miles a year, but it's nothing compared to the lads in England. You hear them going on about spending hours and hours every day going to the races.
"Big-race days, though, are totally different. I've ridden in the Derby three times and the whole build-up is great. Even if you're on a 50-1 shot, you have to have the frame of mind that this horse has a chance or else why is he running. You must think like that or else you're better off staying in the weigh room."
The physical dangers of race-riding were highlighted with terrible clarity last year when both Kieran Kelly and Sean Cleary were killed in racecourse action. The impact of their deaths, and the loss of their colleague, Timmy Houlihan, still resonates in the jockeys' room.
"You can't let it prey on your mind even though you feel bad for their families. There are arguments in there day in and day out but jockeys are our own little clan. Everyone knows everyone else and has time for everyone," O'Donoghue says.
Nevertheless it remains the weight issue that looms over this band of unique sportsmen, with its daily demand for attention taking even the most balanced and good-natured of men into the darkest places.
"With just a few exceptions, these guys are battling the scales on an ongoing basis, and it affects them psychologically. You can't say boo to them sometimes. They get very fractious and can't handle any kind of hassle. You can understand it too. They get the smell of food and can't eat it. Everywhere they go there is food - and they just can't have it," says Dr WalterHalley.
Halley was part of a nine-person group set up in the aftermath of Cleary's and Kelly's deaths to see if there were improvements that could be made to safety in Irish racing. After six months they reported earlier this month with 99 recommendations. But Halley is in no doubt about what the most serious problem is.
"Dehydration is the major medical problem in racing. There are riders going around in a continuous state of dehydration," he says. "When it takes three hours to pass urine for a drugs test it means that person is acutely dehydrated - and that is highly dangerous. It can be a contributory factor to head injuries. I watch the jockeys at the start sometimes and even on the hottest days they might take some water, wash their mouths out and then spit out. There was a survey done at the Curragh prior to racing where all but two jockeys going out for a race were dehydrated. And that was before racing. From now on, however if somebody is in that sort of shape they will be stood down for 48 hours."
Of course, dehydration is the result of looking for an edge, wringing an already dry body of the last stubborn ounce by extracting just a little bit more water by whatever means possible. The cult of diet might mean there are a lot more dieticians throughout the country, but that won't stop wiry little men donning four or five layers of clothes and running themselves into the ground.
"I did it the old-fashioned way," Christy Roche says. "It was running and the sauna,sweating all the time. In the end my problem was mental because I was always on a knife-edge, any little thing would trigger me off. And the thing is that there was no end to it. You couldn't end the sweating, because if you did you were gone. When the season here finished I was off to India and other warm countries because I had to keep going. Otherwise I would have shot up to 10 stone and that would have been terrible to get off."
It's when it gets out of control that the horror stories of "flipping", or of sticking fingers down the throat, or of the infamous "pee pills" that can have serious long-term effects, begin.
"It's a reality that the days of the lightweight jockey are over. The human race is simply getting bigger. The apprentice school here started 30 years ago and since then the average weight of the people coming in has risen by 20lbs. We now have jockeys who can struggle to do nine stone," says Halley.
A recent development has been the move to raise the minimum weights carried in a flat race from 7st 12lbs to eight stone. But that will not stop people trying to get an edge. In a sport where a nose can mean the difference between victory and defeat, and one pound theoretically corresponds to half a length, there will always be those willing to put themselves through the wringer.
It's not glamourous and it is far from a spectator sport but then these jockeys really are a special breed.