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.’
