I used to go home to bed and sleep for an hour after riding out - that's time I should have been using to upskill
When I retired from race-riding I was often asked if I had any regrets and there were never many – you make your decisions in life, learn from what happens along the way and move on. That's always been my attitude.
Recently, though, I have come to realise I should have put my time to much better use because it's only now I understand the opportunities I passed up along the way. And I'm not talking about riding opportunities, I'm talking about education and training opportunities.
From where I am now, I see all the lads and girls in the weighing room stuck on the hamster wheel. I was the same, but we must start looking beyond the here and now.
For starters, I am and have always been very one-dimensional. I have bred, traded and prepped young horses for years and I was never going to do anything else. Those foundations were laid a long time ago, but that's also the very reason why I should have done some training or gained some qualification while I was riding.
While some will argue the top riders might not need to do any other training because of their profile, that doesn't mean they should get away without making the most of their time as a jockey. I actually believe it should be a stipulation of a rider's licence that you have to undertake some practical educational course or acquire some qualification, and the facility to do so is there already. Jockeys are not capitalising on that and too many find the transition hitting them like a freight train when they stop riding.
Equuip, Horse Racing Ireland's training and education arm, has a grant programme that is available to everyone in the racing industry, and there is the Jockey Pathway programme as well. HRI is pushing to change with the times and we as an industry have to move along with it and acknowledge the effort that is being made.
I look at other sports and they seem so much more advanced in this area. You should not come to the end of your career and say, 'What am I going to do now?'. That's too late.
There is a misconception out there that, as jockeys, we are all too busy to do other training. We're not. We spend a lot of time sitting at home, twiddling our thumbs, and I firmly believe that downtime causes other problems as well.
You get yourself into a rut and you get lazy. You ride out in the mornings and race on average three days a week, in Ireland anyway. There isn't a whole load else to do, which is why drink and drugs creep in. I used to go home at lunchtime and go to bed for an hour. That's not exactly squeezing the most out of life or fulfilling my potential.
People might think this is rich or condescending coming from me, but these are regrets I have. Imagine what it's like for someone who wasn't as lucky to have a career like mine.
I have a heap of horses and ponies at home and at some stage I am going to have to get a lorry, so that means I will have to get a HGV licence. I would have been far better off training for that when I had time rather than going to bed for an hour in the middle of the day.
Instead, here I am at 44, flat out with a yard full of horses, five kids and a mortgage to pay. Now I know what it means to actually be busy.
If it was a condition of my licence to acquire some sort of qualification, getting a HGV cert is the kind of thing I could have done in a heartbeat when I was young. There is a massive shortage of equine dental technicians and farriers out there, jobs jockeys could be training for while they are riding. Even a basic horse care course, or something totally different like accountancy – it doesn't matter.
The old way of responding to this would be to suggest that any jockey looking at another career is not fully focused on or committed to riding. I get that and I was the same but, if it were mandatory, that stigma would disappear in a flash.
As jockeys we tend to cocoon ourselves in racing's bubble but it's a false reality. What is very real is that sense of dread in your stomach when you stop riding, or are thinking about it, and you don't know what you're going to do for a living for the rest of your life.
If I had got my HGV licence while I was riding, and was not in the position I'm in and not interested in working in a yard, the day I stopped riding I could walk into the haulage yard over the road and say, 'I don't have much experience but I do have my HGV licence – are there any jobs going?'. All of a sudden, you have a wage coming in and you can build from there again.
Sean Flanagan is the exemplar in this regard. There is a top rider who found the time to train to be a pilot while he was at the peak of his riding career – so it can be done.
If he can commit to such an ambitious undertaking, the rest of us should be able to find time to learn another skill as well.
We often hear about Google and other multinationals in Ireland looking after their employees, and they do. What jockeys don't realise is that they are being looked after just as well but we're not availing of the possibilities on offer.
There is a whole world out there beyond race-riding and that's not something to be afraid of - it's something that should be embraced.
Jockeys can find out more about training opportunities at equuip.ie (in Ireland) and jets-uk.org (in Britain).
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Published on inDavy Russell
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