When, on Saturday afternoon at Champions Day at Ascot, Oisin Murphy is confirmed as the season’s leading jockey, the emotion he will feel most will not be triumph or delight or, even, vindication.
“I put so much pressure on myself to win, it’s just relief,” he says, as he sits on the side of the Kempton Park track ahead of a late-season evening meet. “And when the relief leaves, I don’t look back. It’s hard to say I gain much enjoyment out of the success.”
It is safe to say the 29-year-old from County Kerry is not the typical sportsman. The nephew of Jim Culloty, who won the Grand National and the Cheltenham Gold Cup, he was always destined to ride. But, unlike his relative, he preferred the Flat. And he proved a prodigious talent, winning the jockeys’ title three times before he was 26.
So smart was he on a horse, he threatened to break every record in the book. Except for one thing. His preferred method of unwinding from the relentless grind of the jockey’s routine was via a bottle or a line of cocaine.
After one breach of regulation too many, in October 2021 he was suspended from all racing for 14 months. His chance of adding to his extraordinary tally of championship titles was put in abeyance. And, intense at the best of times, his absence from the sport inevitably led to some serious self-examination.
Counselling key to staying on track
“I made many, many errors that I wish I hadn’t done,” he says, his eyes fixing his interviewer with a ferocious intensity. “I was given a period of time to think about that and come back with a different mindset.”
What he quickly realised was that he had to put a stop to his reliance on drugs and alcohol.
“I don’t drink at all now. There were a few failed attempts before October 2021. But after that I decided I wanted to stop. I started seeing a counsellor who has dealt with a lot of sports people.
“For a while, it was once a week I saw her, now it’s twice a week. She’s integral really to maybe me being able to stay sober. She’s a good sounding board, understands the pressures.”
And the pressures were significant. Not least the fact that, after spending the seven years leading up to his ban taking not so much as a day off, suddenly he had apparently endless time on his hands.
But any suggestion his time away from the racetrack gifted him a space he had never had in his professional life before to reflect on what he wanted to achieve is greeted with a shake of the head. This was no holiday. Not for someone as ferociously driven as Murphy.
“The thing is, there’s a fear of being bored. You go from the schedule of so many rides to nothing, getting up in the morning and not having much to do, it’s a bit daunting. Even the person with the strongest mindset is going to feel a little low.
Racing exile mentally challenging
The foot comes off the gas, you’d expect that feeling to be happiness, I’m afraid that might not be how it pans out. You get this thought: I should be at Kempton today. And it nags and nags away at you.”
Plus, there was a worry that his reputation might make owners wary.
“I was certainly worried that maybe I won’t ride at the same level again, maybe won’t get the same opportunities, I thought about it daily, when I got back to riding, how good would I be?”
He decided the best thing was to fling himself into work. Every morning, he would ride out with horses from the stables of Andrew Balding near Newbury; twice a week he volunteered with Riding for the Disabled, when he could he would pursue his love of show jumping. In short, he immersed himself in horses.
“I knew with hard work in the mornings and through keeping in contact with those who had backed me before, I was going to get some opportunities. Though it was a case of whether I’d ever be as good as I was at Royal Ascot 2021, will that period ever come back?”
It did not help that, spending hours in the gym in his enforced time off, he found his weight rising inexorably.
“I’m small and stocky and I’d been exercising throughout my 14-month suspension and some of it had probably turned to muscle. Which weighs more. I just couldn’t shift it. So, before I was due to come back, I just started eating less. I noticed my mood was really bad, I was surviving off a ridiculously depleted diet. Eventually, I got it off. Not something I want to go through again.”
When he returned in 2023, however, he looked as if he had barely been away. His ferocious will to win was undiminished.
‘This year the best I’ve ever ridden’
In his first season back, he came second in the jockeys’ list. And this season he has won his fourth title, beating the three accumulated by his idol Frankie Dettori. Does that suggest that sobriety has made him a better jockey?
“Statistically, you’d say yes,” he says. “Last year I had six Group One winners, but my strike rate wasn’t where I wanted it to be. This year, 22 per cent of my rides have been winners. That’s the best I’ve ever ridden.”
So, where now? The jockey who, in his early days was reckoned so mouthy in the weighing room he was more than once on the wrong end of a hiding from those he insulted, is now a senior winner. Has his behaviour towards his rivals changed these days?
“I don’t know, I’m probably as loud as I ever was,” he says. “Actually, I didn’t realise until I got back riding how much it meant, the banter in the weighing room.
“First day back riding in 2023 at Chelmsford, the joking around, people making fun of me for the whole two hours I was there: I missed that childish fun. It is a great thing. I hope that never changes.”
Party animal no more
Though one thing has inevitably changed. There will be no noisy celebration of his success when he is crowned on Saturday.
“I’m not the life and soul of the party any more because, for me, there’s no party,” he says. “I unwind these days by going home and watching the television news and eating dinner cooked for me by my girlfriend Lizzie Nielsen. She gets it. She gets me.”
Though, even without the drink, he says the strain can get to him.
“I was very stressed this morning, worried about which horses I might be riding on Champions Day,” he says. “You asked me how many more championships I have in me. I don’t know, honestly.
“I’m obsessive. I check the championship table every day, seeing where I am. It completely occupies all of your thoughts. You don’t have a life outside of it. It is absolutely exhausting. I don’t know, could this be the last one?”
Oisin Murphy will be crowned champion jockey at British Champions Day, Royal Ascot. To find out more visit www.greatbritishracing.com
