‘Nothing but racing for me’ - a Cork jockey talks about life in the racing industry
By Grainne McGuinness
The Irish racing community has had another fantastic week at Cheltenham, with Ruby Walsh and Willie Mullins leading a long list of winners heading into the final day of the festival.
The success is a reflection of a flourishing industry, with more than 16,000 employed in the sport of kings throughout the Republic of Ireland.
Breakingnews.ie spoke to one young jockey from Kilbrin in Cork who is just starting out in his racing career.
18-year-old Connor King is in his first year working full-time as a flat jockey, having been crowned Champion Apprentice for 2013 while still in school.
King is unusual in that his family weren’t directly involved in the industry - he first fell in love with racing watching it at home on television with his family.
"We always had an interest at home," King told Breakingnews.ie . "My father loved racing and watching it on tv.
"Anytime the racing was on RTÉ we used to watch it. After a while there was nothing but racing for me."
King persuaded his parents to allow him try the sport for himself.
"When I was about seven years old I started going to riding school," he said. "I'd been on to my mother and father to let me do it.
"I started off going once a week and then it got to be twice a week and before I knew it we were after getting a pony at home and I started a bit of a pony club and a small bit of hunting."
For a lot of young riders that would be as far as their interest went, but King was keen to take it further. He became involved in 'flapping' - the popular pony-racing scene - and proved he had talent.
"At the age of ten I started pony racing," he explained. "My horse was showing a bit of speed so we brought him to the pony racing and it built up from there.
"When I was 10 we took the pony over to Buttevant and there was racing on there. I just had one ride when I was 10, the next year I had maybe five or 10 rides."
King described a welcoming industry, keen to develop young talent.
"Flapping was a great help, I was riding for the older jockeys who had gone on to do well and I was riding the ponies that they had been riding," he said. "You get noticed that way and it's great experience - you're learning how to race ride and talk to the trainers.
"Even in the Irish Field every Saturday there's a piece in the paper about flapping and I suppose you were being noticed that way as well."
King acknowledged many of his fellow pony riders would have grown up in racing families, but found winning was just as effective in getting noticed: "It would be a help if you had a family name but it didn't make much difference for me anyway."
When King was 15 he began making the move from pony-racing to riding. An introduction from older jockey Billy Lee got him experience in a racing yard - with David Wachman in Tipperary.
"When I was 15 I came up for a week in my holidays, two weeks at Christmas and then I ended up coming to Wachmans for the summer," he said.
"I used to come back every Saturday for that winter and then spent a whole summer here. They signed me on as an apprentice at the end of the year."
From there King's story turned into something approaching a fairy tale - from completing the first double of his career at Bellewstown in July to earning the title of Champion Apprentice at first attempt.
"That was my first full season riding, it all happened so quickly," he described. "Everything was very new to me, going to all these tracks and meeting all these new people.
"To have success as well at the same time was kind of unreal. But great at the same time."
His success reassured both him and his parents that he was on the right track in his ambitions.
"It meant an awful lot. It was a relief too that things went well, nobody could ever take that away from you."
Despite the glamour of high-profile jumps meetings like Cheltenham, King is keen to continue as a flat jockey for the moment, but at 6' tall admits it is a challenge.
"I want to keep riding on the flat because I like it," he said. "Hopefully I'll be able to keep my weight down.
That's probably the hardest thing for me, because I'm quite tall."
"You've to watch what you eat and more. People would be telling you to stay out of the sauna, but sure you've no choice sometimes when you've a couple of pounds to take off.
"You might have to sweat in the bath before you go racing. It's hard sometimes but when things work out it's not so bad."
He had managed combining riding that first year with continuing in school in order to sit his Leaving Cert in June 2014.
Connor doesn’t feel he is missing out now by working full-time while others his age are still in school or experiencing college, as he is confident he has made the right decision.
"I did my Leaving Cert last year so it wasn't as if I left school when I was 15 or 16," he explained. "I got a taste for it that way.
"I see my friends in college now, but I don't think I'm missing out on that much. I know if I was in college I'd want to be racing.
"Last year I got the best of both worlds, I was in school and racing so that worked out well. That whole time I was looking forward to getting out with the horses full-time and now I am."
Hat tip: Ruaidhrí Tierney
