Ruby Walsh: 'Annie Power hurt - that could have been my Frankie Dettori day'

In this interview first published in February 2021 exclusively for Racing Post Members' Club subscribers, legendary jockey Ruby Walsh talks to David Jennings about the next chapter of his life. This has now been made free to read for users of the Racing Post app as our Sunday Read.

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The evolution occurred almost instantaneously. The conclusive piece of evidence, if you ask me, arrived in the aftermath of last year's Close Brothers Mares' Hurdle.

"Paul Townend should have shoved Robert Power in and closed the door on Honeysuckle there, and made her come around. Instead, Rachael Blackmore gets a dream run through. That's the saving of two lengths and she only wins by one."

ITV did not invest in a fence for Ruby Walsh at last year's festival; they knew he was never going to sit on it. Here he was, only in the door two minutes, castigating his protege, his pal, his own teammate, for ballsing up the ride on Benie Des Dieux. 

It was the perfect distillation of racing's shiny new pundit: someone fuelled by facts not fiction, someone keen to blame and explain rather than waffle aimlessly for ages, someone who ultimately didn't care what you thought because he was confident enough in his own tongue. The transition from pilot to philosopher was seamless. 

"I want to get people to think more for themselves when they're watching racing," Walsh says of his punditry style. "Like we do watching soccer or rugby. We figure things out. What system is Mourinho playing? Or what formation has Pep gone for? Why does Klopp have Salah out on the left and not Firmino? All that sort of stuff happens in racing too, but people only want to know what to back in the next race and what's going to win.

"I want to change that. I want to explain tactics. Explain how horses jump and the way horses are ridden, so that more people can understand what's happening during a race. I want to enhance their interest in the sport, not just in gambling, but in what they're actually watching. That's my hope anyway, but whether that will ever happen I don't know.

"There is no doubt that gambling is a huge part of racing, but when you go looking for things in a race there is plenty to learn. Why does somebody end up at the back of the pack? Why has that horse ended up on the outside? Why did this guy get to the front at that point? And why did that other horse never get to the front at all? Something will get caught in a pocket, or be too far back, or make a mistake. You can't just say 'that horse got a s**** ride' and offer no explanation. You have to figure out what went wrong.

"There is so much that happens in a race which nobody seems to look at. Most people only see the last furlong of a race, but sure the last furlong is usually the most uninteresting part of a race because most races are over by then."

The late, great John McCririck christened John Francome 'The Greatest Jockey'; to Walsh he was the greatest pundit. 

He explains: "I always came home and listened to what John Francome said. Always. I would have taped the racing on Channel 4 on a Saturday and watched it that night just to hear what Francome had to say. Whatever he said, be it critical or complimentary, it carried weight. He didn't talk for the sake of talking. He wasn't filling time. He was the one I looked at and thought 'he's making a difference'. If he was critiquing you, there was a fair chance he was right. I learned from whatever he said."

Ruby Walsh: believes his former weighroom colleagues could negotiate an increase in the riding feeCredit: Patrick McCann (racingpost.com/photos)

Does Walsh see any of Francome in himself? "No, no, no," he giggles. "Gillian [Ruby's wife] always tells me when I'm going anywhere not to try to be funny because I'm not funny. I don't have John Francome's sense of humour or wit. That is something you are born with and I'm afraid I just don't have that flair. I can slag as good as anyone, but I don't have his wit or charm."

My own personal punditry barometer is measured in whether somebody gets more annoying the more you see of them. Somehow, the more I see of Walsh the more I want. And he is everywhere: ITV, Racing TV and RTE, the Road To Cheltenham with Lydia Hislop every Thursday, Game On on Irish radio station 2FM every Monday and Tuesday, a column in The Examiner newspaper every Saturday and then there are the Paddy Power gigs for whom he is a brand ambassador.

"I'm lucky to have very good broadband. That's made my life an awful lot easier. There's a huge revenue office in Athy, so I'm fully convinced that's why the fibre broadband comes past my gate between Kilcullen and Athy. It's about the only good thing I've got out of the revenue!"

Hopefully, this latest chinwag isn't too taxing. Walsh certainly seems relaxed anyway, sitting back in his swivel chair fiddling with a screwdriver between his fingers. Perhaps it's in case he finds a screw loose in my head and feels the urge to tighten it immediately. That could happen any moment now as Annie Power pops up in the conversation.

"How do people even come up with the theories?" he wonders of the ludicrous suggestion that Paddy Power paid him €5 million to hop off her at the last in the 2015 Mares' Hurdle.

"Paddy Power is a public company. How can it pay out five million to someone without shareholders wondering where the f*** has that five million gone? That's just for starters. When you really think about it you realise how ridiculous it is. I always laughed when I heard the suggestion.

"The social media abuse only shows us all how horrible humans can be. How little ambition those social media muppets have, to only see or believe the conspiracy, because that day Annie Power fell could have been my Frankie Dettori day, or as close to it as I would ever get. Four Grade 1s on the biggest stage of all. I was very lucky I was going home with Gillian that night. She could reason anything out with me. She would let me talk it out and get it off my chest. How did I do what I did? Why didn’t I do this instead? She would always just reassure me and say 'you’ve got this and that to look forward to tomorrow'.

The abuse must have hurt.

"Of course it did. I'm human. I always believed that you should never show anybody a weakness, though. The people you rode against; the people you were riding for; the people who were giving out about you. I never believed in backing down and showing a weakness. Of course things affected me, the same way they affect everybody. I'm human too.

"But I was always told that if you're going to read what's good about you, you have to read what's bad about you. So I probably never read a whole lot about myself. I would rather stay in the middle. Nobody likes reading bad things about themselves no matter who they are. I found it easier not reading the highs, because it meant I didn't have to read the lows. It was always about not letting anybody see that it's affecting you, that it's hurting you. But I never forgot. And I don't forget. Even with the lads I rode against, I never came in roaring and shouting, but I always got even."

Ruby Walsh on presenting duties at PunchestownCredit: Patrick McCann

Walsh will return to his favourite playground in just over a fortnight, although he is set to be kept apart from the rest of the ITV team and will be broadcasting from an owners' box on his own. He can no longer have a go on the swings and slides either. It couldn't have been easy watching Townend have all the fun last year, winning the Cheltenham Gold Cup on Al Boum Photo and being crowned leading rider at the end of the week.

"There's a part of me and of every sportsperson who will always miss what they did. But the part you miss is winning. The part Brian O'Driscoll misses is scoring the try. That's only about five per cent, if that even, of the effort it takes to get there. When Faugheen won at the Dublin Racing Festival last year, did I want to be on his back when he walked back into the parade ring? Of course I did. But that was only about two per cent of the effort that's required and I most certainly haven't missed any of the other 98 per cent. I miss the winning.

"When Al Boum Photo won, or Ferny Hollow, or whatever horses Paul won on, I missed the walk back down in front of the stands after winning. Do I miss the other 98 per cent of being a jockey? No, I definitely don't. But that's just the buzz that everyone in life misses when they stop doing something."

When was the remaining 98 per cent not worth it anymore? "I probably realised it after Let's Dance, when I broke my leg at Punchestown [in November 2017]. To spend four months working hard to recover from that, aiming to be back for Cheltenham and then getting back and winning on Footpad and Benie on the Tuesday. You're going out the next day on Al Boum Photo in the RSA and you still have a clatter of good rides to come. Then he tips up and you break your leg again. You're lying there thinking: 'How? Why? This just isn't for me anymore'."

Why not then, though? Why put yourself through the relentless recovery process yet again to come back?

"My journey was a dream and I was never going to end it with a nightmare. It's probably stupid, stubborn, whatever you want to call it, but I wanted to finish it my way. It was never going to finish me."

Back in September 2018, during an interview which marked Paddy Power's 30th birthday, Eamon Dunphy asked Ruby Walsh how he would like it to end.

His reply? "I'd love to get off one in Punchestown, pull the saddle off and tell Willie that I won't be out for the next one. That's how I would do it if I had my choice, but you don't often get to do things your own way or have a choice in these things."

How did it actually end? He got off one in Punchestown, pulled the saddle off and told Willie that he wouldn't be out for the next one. It was Kemboy in the Coral Punchestown Gold Cup on the first day of May 2019.

Ruby Walsh announces his retirement after victory on Kemboy at PunchestownCredit: Patrick McCann

"I had visualised it. I had tried to see everything that I thought might happen, but I wish to f*** I had visualised passing the winning post! I wish I had put that thought in my head as to how I would wave properly. That was the only part I hadn't visualised. It dawned on me two strides from the line. What do I do here? Wave? Salute? Anything?

"I knew when he jumped the last and I pulled the stick through into my left hand, and realised Al Boum wasn't coming back at me, that I was 150 yards from the end. I knew it was my last ever 150 yards, but it was 150 yards that I couldn't wait to finish, not 150 yards that I couldn't wait to come.

"It was like the feeling I had when I won the National on Papillon. It was that feeling again only in a completely different way. It was something I couldn't wait to happen. It's like going on holidays; when you're on the flight over it seems to take forever, but on the way home it flies by. The anticipation and excitement of getting to the line made it seem like it took forever. I knew it was coming for so long."

Ruby didn't retire.

"No, I never retired, I just changed career," he says. "I'm 41, not 71. I was never going to retire. I just had to figure out what I was going to do for the second half of my adult life. I still have half my working life in front of me. Figuring out what I wanted to do involved me taking on a lot of things and doing an awful lot of stuff. I was lucky enough in that a lot of opportunities came my way and I was very busy from the get go."

Walsh snapped up Jon Holmes, the same agent as Gary Lineker.

"I knew he was Fitzy's [Mick Fitzgerald] agent and when I looked him up he was Gary Lineker's agent as well. I thought, 'Yeah, that's the guy I want'.

"I didn't know how to go about things so I found someone who did. He had contacts. His first suggestion was to tell me that if I wanted to achieve anything on television, I had to learn my trade on radio first. Nobody can see you making mistakes on radio. They'll hear you, but they'll never see you. You learn how to fill time. That's why I started in radio. I wanted to learn my trade."

He is learning fast and last month he earned unanimous kudos for calling out the starter and the stewards at Naas after an embarrassing start to the handicap hurdle on the card.

Walsh, working for Racing TV on the day, said without hesitation: "That's a false start. That is shambolic. If you've backed those horses I apologise to you. There has to be serious questions asked about the start of that race."

He is always asking questions; probing; caring.

So, then, what of Irish racing right now? It has been a tumultuous couple of months for the industry's image.

"It has to get better and there is never any room for complacency," he says. "I think some things could be freshened up. We could try again. In saying that, I'm not particularly worried about the image of racing. Every sport has good and bad times. I think there are enough people with a willingness to show that we can go the right way and do the right things.

"If the latest drugs enforcement with HRI and the IHRB is implemented and put into practice then that will be a big thing. They need to put it into practice, though. They can't just bring it out and leave it at that."

There's just time for some quickfire Cheltenham-themed questions before we log off. 

If he could ride just one horse at the festival? "Al Boum Photo." Really? "F***ing sure. He's the only horse who could make history."

Is Chacun Pour Soi all he's cracked up to be? "Yeah."

Will Monkfish win a Gold Cup someday? "He could, but how many Stowaways have won beyond three miles? He's not as slow as you think. Three and a quarter miles is just a different ball game to anything else."

Al Boum Photo: the horse Ruby Walsh would like to ride most at CheltenhamCredit: Patrick McCann (racingpost.com/photos)

Punditry is a different ball game to playing too. Brian Barwick, the former head of television sport at the BBC who was responsible for bringing Alan Hansen to our screens, once said: "With a pundit you are looking ten years down the line. There is a honeymoon period when viewers recognise them from their playing days. But that ends. Then you're going to be marked purely on your performance as an analyst."

We might still be in the honeymoon phase, but this is one marriage which looks sure to last.

Ruby Walsh on Willie Mullins

"He's always trying to change something, to make things better. Willie is ultimately his own man. He will seek the advice of several different people, but he will make his own decisions. So then when it goes wrong the buck stops with him, not just when things go right.

"He just keeps changing small things. The way he works the horses; how much work they do; pre-season. He hasn't let the gallop get as heavy this year, he's kept it a little drier. It's the subtlest of things. It's all an evolution and he keeps changing. 

"He never stops looking either. You'd be looking at him some mornings on the gallops and wondering who on earth is he on the phone to now? You'll find he's looking for the next Al Boum Photo, the next Hurricane Fly. It doesn't matter what's in Closutton, he's always looking outside to see what else he can get."

Read more Sunday Reads:

'Legacy is nothing, it's bollocks, nobody will remember me in decades to come' - inside the mind of Sir Mark Prescott 

Jamie Spencer: 'It would have been like going to jail for something you hadn't done' 

Michael Buckley: 'A Champion Hurdle and a Gold Cup. That would be something special, wouldn't it?' 

Oli Bell: 'Everyone thinks I got a job because of my dad - but in many ways I got a dad because of my job' 

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