RUBY.

​For the past few nights I have been going to bed with Ruby Walsh. And very enjoyable I am finding it. It is a nocturnal activity I can highly recommend.
Unsuspectingly, as you would never know it from the voice that leaps from the page, I have also had Malachy Clerkin with me as well. He certainly possesses a soft touch as he is unnoticeable throughout the page turning. I suspect he beavered away in the background, committing to the hard miles of research and dotting i’s and crossing the t’s that Ruby overlooked.
I have had this book in my possession for over eighteen months and quite why I haven’t got round to reading it I cannot say. It’s bad enough that it was published in 2010 and I never got round to buying it new. I suppose back then Ruby was still comparatively young and had many years left in his career, with many chapters of his life still to be lived. And autobiographies of jockeys tend to be as enlightening as finding cockroachs in the larder. After reading Paul Carberry’s autobiography I wanted to give him a slap and the advice to grow up and stop being a mad genius because sooner or later living up to the image was going to have a serious impact on both his health and wealth. I began reading ‘One Hell of a Ride’ hopeful of learning what motivated Carberry, why he was such a genius in the saddle, but in the end he just comes across as a bit of self-destructive idiot with little concept of boundaries. It seems to me that he is only truly happy when he is riding. But then he is a genius, something that will never be said of me.
Even A.P.’s autobiography, as interesting and readable as it was, left me wishing he had not been quite so honest. Part of the book read like a confessional. A.P. is a hero to us all; it was disconcerting to discover the worst of his human frailties.
What I like and respect about Ruby Walsh is the broad streak of honesty that defines his character. As with A.P. Ruby is hard on himself when he believes he has made mistakes and like A.P. he admits to brooding about it for days. Unlike A.P. though, this trait does not define his character. Both these two men are great human beings, the difference between them, I suspect, is if you went to both of them for advice A.P. would not want to hurt your feelings and perhaps would sugar-coat his response, whereas Ruby would give you an honest opinion without any worries that it might not be what you expected to hear. Of the two I suspect A.P. might prove the better neighbour.
This may be controversial, and compared to those better qualified to judge my opinion may not be worth more than two peas and a carrot, I rate Ruby the greatest National Hunt jockey of my lifetime. I used to think Dunwoody was the best I’d seen, even when A.P. was riding, and I know for instance that Ruby rates A.P. as by miles the best jockey he has seen. And he might be right. But what separates the two, I believe, is that there is more than a touch of artistry in the way Ruby rides, allied to great strength and tactical awareness. Whereas A.P. demanded his mount to give him every ounce of energy, Ruby seems, at least at times, to sweet-talk his mounts into giving their all.
Ruby is a joy to watch, especially when riding horses as explosive as Un De Sceaux. The 2017 Ryanair will remain long in the memory. When in his younger days Kauto Star kept thumping the occasional fence his instinct told him it was something he was doing that was causing the bone-crunching errors and was not the fault of the horse. It would have been so easy for him to blame the horse, especially as Paul Nicholls half-blamed himself for switching Kauto in trip in consecutive races.
I love it when he snaps at people, as he did to Derek Thompson at Cheltenham after he asked what Ruby thought the stupidest question anyone had ever asked him. Did he regret choosing Kauto over Denman? I think we all could have answered that one. An on the Morning Line when Geoff Banks suggested Denman was not as good as people choose to think, I thought for a brief moment Ruby was going to let fly with his fists. I know I would have done. Ruby values everyone opinion, even when they are wrong. But there are limits and insulting a great horse in Ruby’s eye, I suspect, is the line in the sand.
We must enjoy Ruby Walsh while he still has a jockeys’ license. He is an elder statesman of the weighing room now; any bad fall, and he has endured plenty during his career, could signal times up. I know there are plenty of good young riders about, as there always seems to be, but there has only ever been one Ruby Walsh: the greatest jump jockey of many a long year.