Ryan Treacy

I was thrilled to get back among the winners at the weekend and get the ball rolling for the season. Dusty Sheehy, who gave me the ride on Grey Mountain Mist, Eric McNamara and Lesley Young have been good to me so it’s great to be able to repay them when I can.

The injuries are just one of those things really, I just have to try and get on with it. There are many lads in the same boat and you just need to try and get back and get the winners. It’s just very hard to get rides at the minute so you have to make the best of any opportunity you can get.

My latest injury was a tough one to take. At Sligo last August a horse flipped over on top of me in the parade ring and I fractured my lower back and pelvis. That ruled me out for about three and a half months but the worst thing about it was that I was only back four days when it happened.

I had just come back after fracturing my scapula and the muscle had torn off my shoulder from a fall in Kilbeggan and I was out two months with that. When I came back I had two rides at the Galway Festival and was placed in the Opportunity Hurdle for Martin Cullinhane and I rode a winner for Mrs. Harrington but then at the weekend I had the incident at Sligo. So I never really got any run at it all last season.

I was going freelance but it was hard making a wage every week and it was tough going. It would be grand if you were getting on the odd nice horse but it is hard to get on one of those types and most of them are in the bigger yards with the retained jockeys. I had a think about it and I just went and got a job with Joseph O’Brien so I’m there every day now and I get a wage now every week. He’s a lovely man to work for.

There’s some real nice horses in the yard and you’d be hoping to get a few spins out of the yard over time but I’m still allowed to go and school for the small trainers in the afternoons so it works out.

Everyone is struggling away it is just a tough game and it will get tougher but I’ve got one winner left in my 5lbs claim so the next goal is to get down to 3lbs and I’d love to ride out my claim but in this day and age that can be very tough. But you make the best of any opportunity you can.

Unfortunately, so far, every time I’ve got to ride a few winners I have never taken off because another injury came along, I just never really had any luck with it but you’d always be going out positive and to do the best you can. I wouldn’t want to do anything else.

If I wanted to go and do something else I could have done it when I had the bad fall at Galway.

I fractured my pelvis and my shoulder in the Galway Plate in 2015 on Foildubh and I was in a wheelchair for three months so that was the time if I wanted to do something else but I never even thought of it. I was lucky enough to know I was going to get out of the wheelchair and get back riding and there’s no other job in the world would give you the satisfaction of riding winners. There’s no thrill like it. I wouldn’t thank you for sitting in an office or picking up a phone all day. There’d just be no satisfaction in that for me personally.

Every year there has been something, I was only back a few months after that and I broke my wrist and missed another few months. Mentally it is tough on the brain.

When it happens it is just hard to let it sink in — it’s not nice — but the thing is you know you are coming back and you have that to look forward to that. But when you get back it is the whole procedure of starting all over again to ride the first winner to get back on the map and the whole thing just starts all over again.

But it is like everything in life, you’ll always come to the crossroads, it is just trying to get back on the straight road again is the tough job.

You are what you are at the end of the day. You might not be a Ruby Walsh but you try your best all the time and you have dreams.

Billy Vance was the man that got me going back at home riding in point-to-points and he was my hero growing up, then Oliver Brady was a massive influence on my career. Oliver started me off and an inspirational man. It was Oliver’s desire every day to get a winner and it was some buzz to get a winner for him.

Now you’d be riding out every day with the likes of JJ Slevinand seeijng him riding an Irish Grand National winner and that would be my dream too. It was Oliver’s dream to have a Cheltenham winner and I’d love to do that obviously. I was second in a Kerry National, it would have been nice to win that. Someday, you never know, you might get the chance and get a bit lucky.

But when you love doing the job you do it’s great and all I want to be doing is riding winners. From a child it was a dream to be a jockey and ride winners but sometimes you have to wonder is it a dream but every day you get up it is a good day and there is always somebody going worse off than you.

It was just nice to get the first winner of the season last week and hopefully now we can keep kicking from here and get a bit of luck along the way.