Paddy Harnett

I turned 21 last month and am from the Co Limerick end of Abbeyfeale. If you cross the bridge you’re in Kerry and if you go out the road a bit you’re in Cork, but I’m definitely Limerick.

I’m from a farming background and my father Adrian foaled a lot of mares for owners of Tom Cooper’s, horses which went on to be trained by Tom. My uncle Daniel was part-owner of Dunguib who was a very smart horse for Philip Fenton so I grew up watching him racing on television and going racing when he was running. I remember watching him win the Champion Bumper at Cheltenham on television at primary school! The horse is still alive and well out in the field at home.

I started off with Tom Cooper. He’s still a great mentor of mine and I’d ring him every week, and then I went on to Andy Slattery’s yard. I also did plenty of hunting when I was younger as well as pony racing. I probably rode about 15 winners in pony racing, mostly on the southern circuit. Raymond and Ross Sugrue started me off in pony racing and the likes of young Andy Slattery, Ben Coen and Shane Crosse were riding against me at the time. I rode at the big Dingle meeting a couple of times and it was a good experience to ride around there.

I was coming into my Leaving Cert year at school in Abbeyfeale and I had done the summer at Andy’s yard. I was in school for about two weeks and then I heard that Donnacha O'Brien was looking for an apprentice, so I was delighted to take the opportunity and that was the end of school for me!

I had taken a year out of school during my Transition Year and I spent that year in Andy’s yard, and only for that I don’t think I would have become involved in racing as a career.

I did the one-day jumps licence course at RACE and I’ve done plenty of schooling and ridden in schooling races around Punchestown and Tipperary. I would have considered going jumping at one point because I thought I was going to get heavy, but my weight has stabilised and I’m happy to stay on the Flat. My younger brother Joe is doing the full Flat apprentice course in RACE at the moment and he’s been put in placement with John O’Donoghue, so look out for him! I’m looking forward to riding against him on the racetrack soon. He’s very tall so he might be one for the jumps at some stage. Another brother Danny rode for a while and he’s farming now, and there’s my younger sister Maeve and my mother Louise at home as well.

At the moment I’m living in the village of Dundrum in Co Tipperary which is not far from Donnacha O’Brien’s yard in Cashel. There’s a golf course on my doorstep and I play a lot of golf there.

I’ve been with Donnacha a couple of years and I’m in there most days. It’s a great yard to be a part of and the season has started well with the Classic contenders going well so hopefully it’ll turn out to be a good year for the yard. The two-year-olds are flying it so far and there’s some more at home that have worked well with the three that have won already so it’s exciting times.

Sometimes I get my chance to ride some of the really good ones there, for example Sunday mornings I get to ride Piz Badile who was second in the Irish Derby and ran well on his comeback at the Curragh lately.

On my days off I sometimes ride out in Ballydoyle, which is a deadly experience and a privilege, or I go home to Limerick.

I recently went over to John Moores University in Liverpool where they have the School of Sport and Exercise Science and I met one of the academics there, George Wilson, who has done a lot of research projects with a view to improving the health and wellbeing of jockeys. A couple of the other lads in the weighroom, like Gavin Ryan and Shane Crosse, had been over there and recommended it to me and Jennifer Pugh from HRI was very helpful in arranging my appointment.

George did a load of scans on me and formulated an exercise and nutrition plan which I’m just starting out on and I’m sure it’ll be very helpful. It was brilliant and I learned a lot there. I cook for myself at home and they have recommended different types of exercise to do which will help me. I’m only on the programme a week but it’s going well and I did 8st 10lb the other day without sweating hard.

I’ve 28 winners ridden, so have two left with my 7lb claim.

My first winner came on Rule The Sea for Tracy Collins at Tipperary in August 2019 and my next ride, Massa Lubrense for John Geoghegan, won at the Curragh the very next day. Both of them were 20/1 shots!

It’s been steady away since then but I’ve gained loads of experience and I’m learning the whole time. Ken Whelan was my agent initially and now I’m with Kevin O’Ryan. Ken has mostly jump jockeys on his books now but he was great to me. He’d ring me every day after racing and go through every race. He lives in Cashel so I still call in to him sometimes for a cup of tea and a chat.

My latest winner was Amusement at Leopardstown. It wasn’t ideal to lose my irons but the filly was genuine for me. I probably had too little of my toe in the iron and when she gave a little jink just as she was getting to the front, it popped out. It wasn’t her fault, it was more or less my fault, and I bog in the foot a bit more now! You can’t ride a finish with one leg in and one leg out, or you’d fall off, so I just kicked out the other foot and drove on. I managed to pip Gavin Ryan on the stablemate Teutates and we’d a bit of a joke about it afterwards.

Leopardstown has been lucky for me, and the Curragh, but I’m still waiting for my first winner at my local track in Listowel. Everyone from the homeplace goes racing there and I’ll be hoping to get one on the board there this year. Hopefully Donnacha will line one up for it!