Galway race week, July 2009, and 22 year old Stephen Gray eagerly rings trainer Pat Flynn for a ride. A horse in a flat handicap with top weight. He had won the week before and now carried a penalty. Gray cleverly thought Flynn might be interested in using a claimer to take some of the weight off. He wasn’t.
Flynn told him he could ride Bahrain Storm though. A horse with plenty of ability in the hugely competitive and prestigious Galway Hurdle. Gray’s hunger in trawling through the entries of a flat handicap had led to him picking up a nice ride over the sticks in the most valuable race of the week.
‘He didn’t take much riding.’ ‘Pat told me to go down the rail, but he was a bit squeezed and didn’t enjoy it so I moved him off.’ Already contradicting himself, an instinctive, ballsy move, ignoring instruction to get the horse travelling more sweetly. The race panned out well from there. Bahrain Storm jumped fluently and eased into contention as the business end loomed. The blinkered runner struck the front with Stephen as they rounded the final corner at the bottom of the hill. ‘The winning post seemed to be going further and further away.’ Bahrain Storm (20/1) won by 6 lengths from the fancied favourite Deutschland with Ruby Walsh aboard.
It was the Dundalk conditional’s biggest ever win by a long way. He remembers everything of the race but ‘the interviews and all that were a blur’. AttheRaces, TG4, RTE, various radio stations and most of the print media kept him for over an hour. ‘On the way home it started to sink in.’ ‘I went home to Limerick but all my flatmates and my girlfriend Maria were egging me on to go back to Galway.’ Laughing he reminisces, ‘we went out for a while’.
Twenty months later Stephen and his still girlfriend Maria like so many others on this island are emigrating to Australia. Stephen is not quick to blame anyone. None of the old reliables cross his lips; the government, the banks or the recession. Simply, ‘it’s very hard’. ‘Even Ruby is now riding bad horses in bad handicaps to make up for the one’s he’s missing.’ He points out ‘there’ll be only 3 jump races on a card in the summer’, ‘less horses’, ‘and you’ll have Ruby, Barry, Andrew Mc, Paul Carberry and the likes riding the best horses’. Stephen is not bitter but simply bemoans the lack of opportunity realistically facing him this summer. He admits though ‘if you’re not riding winners you are not riding with a lot of confidence’. His last winner was last year, in Australia! It’s been a tough barren spell. ‘I’ve been working since I was 14 here, it’ll be a change anyway.’ ‘If I go out there, hopefully ride a few winners, and get my confidence back.’
Stephen’s father Raymond rode in 50 races and worked for a well known local trainer Bunny Cox. ‘I started going up there when I was four or five to ride ponies.’ Stephens’ first racing memory was watching the Cox Trained Atone win the Ladbroke hurdle at Leopardstown on tele. His father brought him pony racing one weekend when he was 13. Gray remembers how he only went to a couple of meetings the first year, ‘they were too far, I was still living in Dundalk’. At 14 Stephen met Hughie Stapleton from Navan, who raced flappers at these meetings. ‘He had a lad for the horses, yer man didn’t go down one weekend and I rode a winner for him down in Tipperary.’
A lucky break. Aspiring jockeys need them, they’ll get enough bad breaks down the line. ‘I won a couple on her, then Hughie was like an agent to me.’ Stephen was winning most rider on the pony circuit with 35 wins in his last year before going professional. There was no such thing as champion pony rider, an accolade that his brother Shane won only last year whilst 16 year old also. Stephen didn’t get the coverage of his brother but got as much satisfaction. There is a striking similarity between the brothers. Both agonisingly 2nd in the famous Dingle Derby, both started from little or nothing with relatively few contacts and both developed an insatiable desire for horse riding.
Stephen or SJ Gray on the race card, ‘never wanted to do anything else’. So much so he never held a job outside racing and left school after the Junior Cert to follow his dream. At seventeen he signed onto Pat Martin as apprentice. He weighed 7 stone 10 pounds. The first time Stephen was ever placed on a horse he had to waste 10lb to ride it. This was 10lb from an already fit hard working youngster who was not exactly hanging around McDonalds of an evening. He managed it ‘with great difficulty’. ‘Running, sweating and starving for six days.’ He’d eat a cereal bar a day to do him. Was it worth it? ‘It was at the time.’
Stephens first ride was in Navan, the weighing room ‘a dark, stinking old place’. ‘You’d be nervous, really nervous.’ It was in a 2yo maiden on a colt having his first run. Like his jockey, everything came new to him. They didn’t trouble the judge, ‘out the back, just having a run’, he admits with a smile. He rode his first winner for his boss in Limerick on a horse called Buddy Man. ‘It was before all the motorways were open and it was an evening meeting so we weren’t home till bed time.’ In years to come new motorways would lead him back up the road to celebrate his biggest win, celebrating like the riding would become easier. Stephens’ best flat win was in Hamilton, Scotland. It would be his 3rd winner and meant losing his 10lb claim.
Since old enough Stephen has had a serious drive and work ethic with horses. He used to ride two lots out before school in Bunny Cox’s and since the Junior Cert has worked full time with the thoroughbreds. First with Gerard McArdle, then Pat Martin, Mark Loughnane, and Michael Hourigan until now where he is freelance and rides out for different trainers 6 or 7 mornings a week, covering miles whilst all the time trying to get on horses at the races. ‘Weight never got that bad’, ‘but I was too light for jumping and too heavy for the flat’. He recalls how ‘I rode my first winner over jumps on a Sunday and I had ridden a winner on the flat on the Saturday’. He didn’t let it bother him being too heavy for the flat. ‘I kept going, tipping away, didn’t think about it at the time.’ Just happy to be riding horses.
His first winner over jumps came in a chase in Tramore on Maddys Joy for Mark Loughnane. ‘I’d only ever schooled over fences once or twice and ridden in a few hurdle races. She was basically a runaway, a tearaway in front, she just ran away with me and I didn’t know what I was doing. I just held her neckstrap. I remember Barry Geraghty tried to go up my inside and Andy Mc (AJ McNamara) let a roar at me and I nearly put him through the rails.’ Watching the race back the horse did ‘tearaway’ in front. The teenager on board though showed superb horsemanship for his first ride over steeplechase fences around the rally track that is Tramore racecourse. Every time Stephen found a stride, in unison with his willing partner. If not he was in trouble. Fair enough he nearly put one of the senior jock’s through the rails, in Tramore though you can be forgiven, you do well to keep your own mount from running through the rails it’s that tight.
Gray got plenty of experience with Michael Hourigan, regularly riding albeit the second or third string. He had three winners in his time there, ‘I don’t think there is anything else I should have won on’, he points out. He doesn’t say it exactly but Stephen never got many winning opportunities there. He was behind a list of jockeys, working tirelessly, getting rides but not ones with serious chances. Stephen made a living though with getting plenty of rides even without taking home much prizemoney. He saved and he and his girlfriend bought their own house.
Since his Galway Hurdle winner in August he was getting plenty of rides. ‘At least if I rang up a trainer they knew who you were.’ ‘It was just easier.’ Along with that success he had travelled down under with a team of Irish jockeys in a challenge which they won and he was lying second in the conditional jockey’s championship after riding some winners. Life was good.
A turning point came in March 2010 when Stephen dislocated his shoulder. It ‘stopped everything’. He believes that he may have missed three or four winners in his time off and ended the campaign only beaten by six. He reckons he has been lucky with injuries. He talks as if nothing of the dislocated shoulder, broken teeth, stitches and being stood down by the doctor for a few days here and there.
A second trip to Australia did come however in the summer of 2010 after his injury. This time he rode a winner, which remains his last winner. A $40,000 hurdle at Morphettville Irish Day which once again sealed a win for the Irish jockeys. It was his first win for 5 months, and it’s been 8 months since. ‘It’s very hard.’ Australia brings opportunity and some hope.
In 2008 Stephen rode Mac Robin to victory in Clonmel to ride his third winner in the space of a week. ‘You think you’re going to win a Champion Hurdle or a Grand National, but it doesn’t work out that way.’
Steven Pateman is the best rider out in Victoria according to Stephen. ‘He wouldn’t be out of place in Ireland or England.’ A lack of jump jockeys, good prizemoney and a change of lifestyle has attracted Stephen to Australia, while tough times here at home has made up his mind. He would however ‘love to come back to Ireland, to ride winners’.
The rise and fall of SJ Gray is so indicative of the luck and journey that has inhabited the people of Ireland. From humble beginnings to the success of the €150,000 Arthur Guinness Galway Hurdle. From mucking out horses to riding them out in a finish at crowded tracks. From riding all the no hopers in the land to getting that lucky break one beautiful day in Ballybrit and for everyone to know your name.
To This.
Packing up your stall and foundations you’ve just laid to set sail for Australia.
Stephen is less worried by it. He is getting on with it. The people in charge tell us our exports are thriving. They sure are. Six or seven fine jockeys will emigrate this year to Oz. They will once again display the endless riding talent that is nurtured here.
Galway (Tent), emigration, exports doing well…..It has an all too familiar tone. Let’s hope Stephen comes back sooner rather than later, confidence intact, ready to draw success in his homeland once again which he so deserves.
Written by Peter Kingston after interviewing Stephen a couple of days before he set off for Australia
No comments:
Post a Comment