No Regrets

When Davy Russell came back for the second-last time, before he retired for the first time, he had spent 11 months recovering from a broken neck. The surgeon told him that 90% of people would be paralysed after the injury he had suffered in October 2020; Russell belonged to the blessed one in ten.

He was 41 years of age by then, with nothing left to do in the saddle that was new, or more important than anything he had done before. Bad luck and good luck had come to a resolution and offered him an easy way out.

The general assumption was that he wouldn’t come back. Why would he? Russell had a lot of time to think. The last thing he considered was stopping. What other people thought only mattered in a tiny constituency close to his ear and his heart. He refused to surrender whatever control he had left. That was the thing: the fall had not taken away his power to decide.

“Retiring was not seriously on my mind,” he says. “I knew it would be an option. I was of the age where I could retire. I suppose when I broke my neck in Limerick everybody had me retired anyway – bar my wife and Gordon (Elliott). I don’t know what he was thinking but what he was saying was that all the horses were there for me.

“But it got to a stage where I was never retiring because of an injury, if I could prevent it. It was nearly an incentive to get back. I didn’t want to retire through injury. I wanted to retire riding. I mentioned to my surgeon, Dr Joe Butler, about riding again and he said, ‘Your neck is probably stronger now than before you broke it.’ He said, ‘It’ll be rigid and it’ll take an awful lot of work but that’s up to yourself. You’re well entitled to come back and ride. It would be very unfortunate for anything to happen again.’ That flicked a switch in me that retirement wasn’t an option. It was only a case of getting my body back fit enough and mobile enough.”

You wonder about his nerve. Was it frayed? Did he worry that it wouldn’t be there when he needed it? Not every jockey reaches the end of their career with their courage intact. Russell had survived a fall that could have paralysed him. But he had processed all that. You can’t get to a fence hoping it’s there. It never left.

“My nerve was never a problem – even to this day, it’s not a problem. I’ve no fear.” He pauses.

“Of anything, really. I don’t know what it is, I’m just lucky. I don’t know what way I’d put it but I was never really… Like, (Paul) Carberry was a fucking all-out rider, he’d lay everything on the line. Whereas I was a little bit more calculated. I was never wild with my riding as such. I used always ride on feel. If it felt right I’d go with it and if it didn’t feel right I’d manoeuvre it into my favour. I never frightened myself really. I never got a fright. “I had huge trust in horses. The horse will figure it out anyway (at a fence) to the best of his ability. The only thing I’d think at the back of a fence after a fall is, ‘Wasn’t that unlucky for that to happen?’ Rather than saying, ‘I should have done this,’ or ‘I should have done that.’”

In the beginning point-to-points were his arena. Looking back now, it was a different universe. There were more farmers with a recreational horse and more small traders hoping to turn a buck. Every point-to-point had a race dance. Crowds were bigger. The season was shorter, but it was vibrant and it flew from Sunday to Sunday.

“It was some craic now. It was the best craic of all time. All innocent fun. We’d meet on a Monday evening to watch a replay of all the races and you’d be looking forward to the next Sunday.

“When I started it was starting to get a bit more professional. Horses were starting to be schooled properly. I remember, when I was a young lad, before I ever rode a winner, I went to Skibbereen to school a horse. It took me two and a half hours to get down there in a 1979 Toyota Starlet and when I got down there I was jumping over square bales of straw. You’d often see fellas making their own fences stuffed with Christmas trees. That day was soon gone. It was getting very much more professional all the way through.”

When Russell joined the paid ranks his first big job was with Ferdy Murphy in the north of England. By then he had ridden 150 point-to-point winners and 70 under Rules. He was 23. Still young and full of promise. He lasted 14 months with Murphy. By the end the trainer thought he was spending too much time back in Ireland, building his profile with Sunday rides. They had no falling out but there was a parting.

“I was always happier in Ireland. I loved riding in England, but it was just more comfortable in Ireland. In England, it was tough, tough going. My weight was a huge issue and I wasn’t really set up properly. I had no house as such. The only reason I stayed so long was that I was living with Paul Murphy, Ferdy’s son, and he was so good to me, him and his partner. They looked after me like a child basically. That was probably the only reason why I stayed for so long.

“It was a huge start for me. It was a brilliant start. I’d always revert back to things Ferdy would have said to me. I think he set the tone for the kind of rider that I was. I kind of progressed from what he had started me as. I found going from riding point-to-points to riding as a professional an incredible jump. Something I wasn’t prepared for. I thought I would gradually slot into a professional jockey but it was tougher than that. Up until Ferdy died we were very close. He was a good man. You’d take an awful lot from him.”

When he came home Russell steadily built his contacts and his numbers, but the relationships that transformed his career were with Gordon Elliott and Michael O’Leary’s Gigginstown House Stud. Elliott and Russell were friends since their days as amateur jockeys and when Elliott started as a trainer, Russell’s father Jerry sent him a few horses.

When Russell was hired by O’Leary to be his retained jockey in 2007, Elliott’s yard was still in its infancy, but over time all of those relationships overlapped. Elliott became one of Gigginstown’s most trusted and patronised trainers, and Russell was Elliott’s go-to guy, regardless of the silks. When Russell’s retainer with O’Leary ended suddenly on New Year’s Eve 2013, Elliott’s confidence helped to break his fall.

“It was huge. I understood him and he understood me. It was a big, huge team effort up there but it just clicked. We never had a cross word or we never misunderstood each other – ever. There was never a problem. We didn’t have to wait that long until the next winner came along. They came fairly quick. Once I was on point he had horses on point pretty much 12 months of the year – which is not an easy thing to do.”

Less than three months after losing the Gigginstown gig Russell rode three winners in a day at the Cheltenham Festival, including two in those famous maroon silks. The glittering centrepiece though was Lord Windermere in one of the most chaotic Gold Cups imaginable. The timing couldn’t have been kinder.

In big races, winning rides are often hailed as masterful. Russell makes no such claim. On the first circuit it looked as if Lord Windermere was going to be tailed off and there was nothing Russell could do to have him any closer. What Russell brought to the party was canniness and calm. He delayed losing the race for so long that winning was suddenly a possibility. Five horses jumped the last with a chance and fanned out across the track.

“You couldn’t tell him what to do. He’d want to be happy doing it… When he’d land at a fence I’d let him feel he was the bossman”