RACING: BRIAN O'CONNORtalks to Ireland's newest racing ambassador as the Flat season prepares to get serious on the plains of Kildare.
GIVEN THE pick, Mick Kinane would plump to ride Xtension in Saturday’s Abu Dhabi Irish 2,000 Guineas. And he mentions Lolly For Dolly as one he likes for the following day’s 1,000. The intriguing thing, though, is that he still looks more than capable of riding the pair of them.
In fact, in the six months since Sea The Stars provided an unsurpassable finale to one of the most successful riding careers in racing history, Kinane has put on the princely total of 2lb.
For the more voluminous of the species it’s infuriating to think that, after 35 years of daily devotion to the scales, someone suddenly given the green light to tuck into all the good stuff still looks like one of the whips he used to wield with such aplomb. But old habits die hard.
“At the start of January I made a conscious decision I was going to try and stay in decent shape,” the legendary figure said yesterday. “I didn’t want to balloon. So I started running, just two meals a day, and I ride out two mornings a week at John Oxx’s. So I’m very similar to what I was when riding, about 8st 8lb or 8st 9lb.”
The irony was that Kinane was standing next to the Maddenstown gallop on the Curragh, a few hundred yards from Liam Browne’s old yard where a promising apprentice career in the 1970s was once threatened to be scuppered by weight that infuriatingly refused to stabilise.
Now he was back in his role as Horse Racing Ireland’s flat racing ambassador, scanning some of Paul Deegan’s string as they cantered past and cheerfully adding some classic lustre of old on what will be the opening Group One weekend of Ireland’s Flat season this weekend.
It’s 28 years since the first of Kinane’s three winners of the 2,000 Guineas, Dara Monarch, provided the hungry aspirant with his first major victory.
He also had a trio of successes in the 1,000, not to mention a truly remarkable Tattersalls Gold Cup win on Montjeu a decade ago.
It’s a roll call to stir the memories, but Kinane is not one to trade on them. Saturday will be his first day racing in Ireland since he retired.
There remain plenty in Ireland, probably a majority of race fans, who will resolutely continue to resist Flat racing’s charms in favour of the jumps game. But this weekend will provide all the nuance and raw speed that continues to enthral those devotees of the summer sport.
Paul Deegan is one of them. On the face of it, the 31-year-old from Dunlavin probably shouldn’t be. As a kid from a non-racing family who cycled to Victor Bowens’s yard on weekends, and continued his education at Jessica Harrington’s, he had a classic National Hunt introduction.
But then he answered a newspaper ad for the job of pupil assistant trainer at Mick Channon’s yard in England. The job-description was fancier than the general dogsbody reality, but Deegan thrived to such an extent he became assistant proper to the former England soccer international.
The fascination became ingrained.
“The jumpers take too much time. And they’re too slow!”
Deegan grinned mischievously yesterday at the historic Clifton Lodge yard he is now based at after starting out on his own four years ago.
“I love training two-year-olds. You never get a dishonest two-year-old, they always try for you. And then we f*** them up!”
It is five years since Frances Crowley produced Saoire from Clifton Lodge to win the 1,000 Guineas – by coincidence under Kinane – and now Deegan has a Classic contender in Lady Springbank, who could take his burgeoning career into Group One territory.
The exclusivity at the highest level which so annoys jumping fans is clear in the build-up to Sunday’s fillies Classic. Coolmore have five of the 20 still left in, Godolphin have a €32,500 supplementary entry and there are Sheikhs and Sirs peppered through the list of possibles.
But that only emphasises Deegan’s achievement in making Lady Springbank a legitimate contender.
“I’m praying for rain. If the ground is right she will go there with a live each-way chance,” the trainer said of his double Group Three-winning grey.
“She has everything you’d want. All she does is eat, sleep and work. We just have to see now if she is fast enough.”
The generalisation that these Group One prizes are a closed shop doesn’t really tally with Kinane’s reading of the 1,000 Guineas either. For the man who also rode Trusted Partner (1988) and Yesterday (2003) to win, he significantly avoids the big operations in favour of Tommy Stack’s Lolly For Dolly when discussing possible winners on Sunday.
“She was impressive on her last start. Once she got out she quickened away well,” he said, with the authority of a man who was renowned as a student of the formbook in his riding days, and whose physical absence from the track hasn’t reduced his awareness of what has been going on.
“Xtension caught my eye in the 2,000 Guineas at Newmarket. I thought he finished the race out very well,” he considered.
“It’s hard to know with Ballydoyle. Steinbeck might be a bit behind what they would like. And I think the Curragh mile will be a real stamina test for Canford Cliffs. I thought they rode him with a little bit of reserve at Newmarket.”
It is these top-flight weekends that stir the competitive juices in the former champion jockey, but he remains happy with his decision to retire at 50.
“You look at these good races and start thinking about what you might do in them. And there’s a good camaraderie in the jockeys’ room. But the day-to-day stuff I don’t miss at all.”
From the look of him, that’s probably good news for Kinane’s former colleagues.
