Adrian Maguire: 'I couldn't borrow, borrow, borrow - I wouldn't sleep at night'

Ireland editor Richard Forristal recently caught up with legendary rider Adrian Maguire. This interview has been made free to read for users of the Racing Post app and billed as our Sunday Read. Members' Club Ultimate subscribers have access to fantastic interviews like this every week. Click here to sign up.

It's lunchtime on a crisp winter's afternoon but Adrian Maguire's day is already eight hours old. The alarm went off at 4.45am and his tour of duty began with a journey of just shy of 100km from his home in Laharn Cross, County Cork to Rosegreen in neighbouring Tipperary.

It's a long way to go, but five regally bred lots in Ballydoyle keep the wolf from the door. This is Maguire's routine five or six days a week. Maybe it's not what we imagined jump racing immortality would look like but sepia-tinted memories don't pay the bills.

Maguire's great foe Richard Dunwoody embarked on polar expeditions and traversed the globe on daredevil escapades across new frontiers in his quest to fill the void left by race-riding.

Maguire did something even more adventurous: he decided to train horses for a living. It is a perilous vocation these days.

Despite being pretty good at it, he and his wife Sabrina ultimately found it unviable and finally cried enough in 2018. There's not much glamour to the grind of clocking in and out of Ballydoyle but Maguire is in chipper form as he cradles a cup of coffee and shoots the breeze.

"I'm getting paid every Friday and getting a good wage," he says. "And I don't miss the struggle. I probably carried on training five years longer than I should have, hoping things would turn around for the better, but it was something that had to be done and there's a lot to be said for what I'm doing now riding out in Ballydoyle."

Maguire pauses for a moment and a broad smile stretches across his face at what crosses his mind next. "It's where we all go to get fixed," he chortles. "That's what I was told when I arrived there! There are some great lads riding out there who've been around the block, all great trainers in their own minds, you know."

His cheerful disposition is a world removed from the broken man who revealed his intention to wind down his training operation at Thurles in March 2017. Maguire wears his heart on his sleeve, and that emotive At The Races interview, when he seemed to have the weight of the world on his shoulders and was utterly dejected, was arresting.

He has always been a ferocious competitor. His unmistakable crouch in the saddle used to morph into a power-packed drive that is seared into many of our minds, his fearless ambition carrying equine icons like Viking Flagship, Cool Ground, Barton Bank and Florida Pearl to some fabled triumphs.

Clearly, that competitive spirit is repressed when he isn't at the cutting edge of the sport in an autonomous sense. Was that transition difficult to reconcile?

"I had to have a good talk with myself and take myself down a couple of gears," he laughs.

"It was more action when I was training. I had been riding a lot of the work and schooling myself, so it was very much hands-on. To be honest, when I went into Ballydoyle first I did find it a bit boring, because I'd have been used to popping this and that, getting a fall here and there – although that's not to say you wouldn't get a fall in Ballydoyle.

"So it is a big change. You come in, you ride out your lots and, to be fair, you're going in a straight line up the gallop – you know what I mean! But I'm 51, so I'm not going to be breaking any records riding horses.

"Giving up the training was disappointing at the time, but life is full of disappointments. You just move on and get on.

"Most of us in horses, we never got into it for the money – it was for the love of it. To make a living out of it as a jockey and trainer, that was special, but at the end of the day you had to be true to yourself. I held on to the bitter end but it just wasn't viable."

Famously, soon after setting up at his purpose-built yard near Mallow, Maguire produced Denman to win his point-to-point before telling Paul Nicholls that he firmly believed if there was a horse in Ireland who could win a Gold Cup, it was him.

Finian's Rainbow and Silverburn were others he put through his hands, and he trained the likes of Celestial Wave, Golden Kite and Let Yourself Go to some big wins on the track.

The economic crash took a toll, though, and he was left carrying a lot of horses. When the recovery set in, those willing to scale up and invest significant money in store horses were the ones who thrived, an aggressive business model defined by the likes of the Doyles and Colin Bowe in Wexford.

Was that sort of commercial approach, which turns on financial speculation, ever an option?

"I have nothing but admiration for those kind of fellas," Maguire says, "but I couldn't borrow, borrow, borrow. I wouldn't be able to sleep at night. Fair play to the lads who do it, it's working for them and none of it fell in their laps, but it's a lot to take on."

Adrian Maguire: "I couldn't borrow, borrow, borrow. I wouldn't be able to sleep at night"Credit: Patrick McCann

The prompt to pick up the phone to Maguire was that it recently passed 20 years since he announced his retirement from one of the most enthralling riding careers of modern times.

It ended after he broke his neck in a fall at Warwick on the eve of the 2002 Cheltenham Festival, although it was another six months before the finality of the injury was confirmed.

Shortly before he suffered that fateful fall from Luzcadou, he had demonstrated his enduring class with a spellbinding effort on Florida Pearl in the King George. He was only 31 when he had to accept medical advice and call time on a whirlwind career.

Remember, he was champion point-to-point rider in Ireland in 1991, a season in which he rode six winners on one card at Dromahane in May. That was the year he won his first Cheltenham Festival race on Omerta, on whom he also landed the 1991 Irish Grand National.

Less than 12 months after vacating the point-to-point realm he had secured a seminal Gold Cup success on Cool Ground for Toby Balding. Maguire was still eligible to ride in conditional jockeys' races at the time – a prodigy.

Among a host of other marquee victories were epic wins in the Queen Mother Champion Chase, Tingle Creek and Melling Chase on Viking Flagship, plus Barton Bank's King George success. In just over a decade, he accumulated 1,083 winners.

Maguire, whose amateur rider son Finny works at Barry Connell's emerging yard, was cursed with some rotten luck along the way. He missed four Cheltenham Festivals due to bereavement or injury, but he was a generational talent and his association with David Nicholson – the Duke – was exquisite.

"I'd do it all over again if I could," he says. "Even when I think back to starting out with Michael Hourigan when I was point-to-pointing, it was just to be carefree doing something that you loved – it was all I ever wanted to do and there was nothing else in my head. You'd be oblivious to anything else going on in the world."

Maguire's relationship with the Duke ultimately broke down badly and publicly, with Richard Johnson promoted on some first-strings at Jackdaws Castle while Maguire was the retained rider. It made for an acrimonious divorce, and one that you suggest led to him riding without his trademark abandon.

"Yeah, it was the only rough patch I had over there," he agrees. "The Duke and myself weren't getting on. You were damned if you did and damned if you didn't – that was the atmosphere between us. When he was on your side, you couldn't have a better man backing you, but it was never going to last when we weren't seeing eye to eye."

He went on to develop a lucrative association with Ferdy Murphy, with whom he had first combined to win the 1992 Hennessy Gold Cup with Sibton Abbey, but his rapport with those Nicholson stalwarts was force-of-nature stuff. Barton Bank, freewheeling to a second King George when one of his hair-raising blunders hurled Maguire to the turf at the final fence, was always a rollercoaster.

"I've thought about the horse long and hard," he reveals. "That fall, it was a crippling moment at the time, and the poor horse is remembered for that more than winning 12 months earlier. He didn't find jumping easy, but he had no wither – apparently he reared over on a concrete yard and smashed his wither as a young horse.

"I remember after he won the King George, the Duke got Ginny Elliott, the Olympic eventing rider, in to do a schooling session with him, so she taught him to pop and use himself. But I actually think it confused him, because up to that point he had his own way of getting from A to B when he wasn't meeting a fence long. Afterwards, he thought he could pop, but he still couldn't."

Florida Pearl was a more flamboyant model. Willie Mullins had tried to book Maguire for the ride in the 2001 King George but he was committed to riding for Murphy at Wetherby. When that got abandoned on the day, Murphy rerouted him towards Market Rasen, which the cold snap also then claimed. Maguire belatedly diverted to Kempton to reclaim the mount on Florida Pearl from JP McNamara.

"Andrew Le Jeune, who does TV work in Hong Kong now, was driving, and we high-tailed it down to Kempton," Maguire recalls.

"I remember Fitzy [Mick Fitzgerald] was riding Bacchanal and they were in front, and just going around the bend away from the stands the final time, he ran a little wide and carried First Gold with him. I was on the rail behind him and – zoom! – Florida Pearl nipped up there. I just sat up on him from there and steadied it all the way, and he really beat them all for boot. He had some speed for a big horse. Put it this way, I'd say if he came along later in Willie's career you might have seen him line up in some of those good Flat races."

If his dalliance with Florida Pearl was of the fleeting variety, the affiliation with Viking Flagship was at the other end of the spectrum. There weren't many more popular combinations, epitomised as they were by their diminutive stature and that Herculean will to win.

"I loved riding him," Maguire beams. "What he lacked in ability, he made up for in guts. At the beginning of a season, when he'd be doing small canters, you'd hear him coming up the gallop before you'd see him. His breathing wasn't great but he was a real tiger.

"The race I always look back on fondly with him is the Melling in 1995. That was Viking Flagship in his pomp. We were all flat out turning in. Deep Sensation, Martha's Son and himself – jeez, they were three right horses – and he got up on the nod, brave as a lion. And he used to run. He'd get plenty of it before Cheltenham and then he'd go to Aintree and Punchestown as well. An incredible horse."

All-time classic: Viking Flagship (centre), Deep Sensation (right) and Martha's Son jump the last in the 1995 Melling Chase

Halcyon days?

"Yeah, and it was spread out a lot more back then, between trainers and jockeys. I don't know if it's because we're getting older or what, but it seemed to go around a lot more. A lot more people seemed to have their day than is the case now. I don't begrudge them, it's just the way it's gone."

The weighing room has changed as well. When Maguire finished two decades ago, he was sixth on the all-time list of winningmost jump jockeys. Two decades on, his haul doesn't even get him in the top 20. There is more racing, but jockeys' fitness regimes and diets are also helping them last a lot longer.

"It's gone more professional, hasn't it?" Maguire muses. "We all know the stories from back in the day, and it was the same with the rugby players, not getting in until all hours and still producing man-of-the-match performances for Ireland, but it's not like that anymore. There's an argument for it too.

"Ruby Walsh, AP McCoy, Noel Fehily, Dickie Johnson – they were all into their forties when they retired. Look at Davy Russell now. I suppose when someone like McCoy passes through, he's going to leave his mark on the younger generation coming up, and he was just completely dedicated.

"Being honest, I wouldn't say I was ever a dedicated jockey in that sense, but I loved horses and loved riding horses. I just got on them and rode them, you know?"

There weren't many better, either. When Maguire retired, Dunwoody described him as the best jockey never to be champion. It's a statement that many still subscribe to, and Dunwoody was well placed to make the claim given their rivalry.

The bitter title tussle they served up throughout the 1993-94 season is still the exemplar for such head-to-heads, a reference point that hasn't come close to being matched since. Maguire finished with 194 winners, which remains the highest tally by any runner-up in the championship, but lost out by three.

Adrian Maguire (right) and Richard Dunwoody arrive at Warwick races in 1994

Their duel came to an infamous boiling point at Nottingham in March, when Dunwoody put the young challenger through a wing in a selling hurdle.

"He got 14 days and should have got six months," Maguire roars in hilarity at being reminded of it. "And he bought me dinner on the way home.

"What did Woody's head in that day was that Willie McFarland was riding one for John White in the race and so was I. Willie was in front and Woody was on his outer, and I was tracking Willie. We were turning out of the back and I gave Willie a shout, 'Bit of room, Willie'. Next thing, I could see Woody looking back, and he started to lean on Willie. Then Woody kicked on, but when we came up the straight, sure you'd have got a bus up his inner, but when he saw it was me, he just lost the rag!"

What was it like being immersed in such a testy battle for the season?

"Sure, it was intense, but it was good for racing. There was a bit of drama thrown in, and I've never heard of a championship before or since to generate as much interest. It was a fair year, and I was totally committed to getting it the following year and then broke my arm and finished second again. I wouldn't look back on those things and be sorry for this or that. They were great times."

That's exactly how we remember them as well. Memories may not pay the bills but some do fill your heart.

Maguire on . . . Denman

"Henrietta Knight and Terry Biddlecombe came to see him the day he won, but she went off him when I told her he'd been hobdayed. I had him at home for about four months after his point-to-point.

"Then I heard Paul Nicholls and Paul Barber were going to Dawstown point-to-point one day, so I went over and asked them to come back and look at the horse. I told them I was five minutes away but it was about half an hour.

"Anyway, they followed me back, and Paul was looking at the horse as Paul Barber was coming across the yard. He shouts over to him, 'Don't bother coming over – you won't like him'. He wanted him for himself!

"When I told him his wind had been done, he said, 'That's grand – saves me doing it.' That was it.

"He was an incredible horse. From the day I first put a saddle on him to the day he won at Liscarroll in March was just five months. He never left a nut or missed a day – he had a great constitution."

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