Geraghty raring to go at Cheltenham

The lady jockeys' changing room at Newbury racetrack is not a romantic setting but, sitting on a hard wooden bench alongside a mechanical horse and a giant set of weighing scales, Barry Geraghty sounds smitten. Instead of his usual preference for pragmatic language, Geraghty smiles and gushes helplessly at a first mention of the two best horses at this week's Cheltenham Festival.

"Sprinter Sacre and Simonsig?" he says dreamily as he repeats the names of the outlandishly heavy favourites he will ride in the Queen Mother Champion Chase and the Arkle Trophy. "They're gorgeous horses. Gorgeous. The first time I sat on Sprinter he won a bumper at Ascot and I was blown away. He's beautiful. He's so natural and does everything with such ease and grace. But he has a lovely nature too – and so much class. He's as athletic as he is co-operative and so if you want to go for a really big jump he's up for it. He does it all at unbelievable speed."

Sprinter Sacre might be the most stunning horse in the country right now, and Geraghty compares jumping some fences with him as "a bungee jump", but he has a rival for superstardom within his own yard. "Simonsig has, possibly, even more speed," Geraghty says of the trainer Nicky Henderson's second jewel of a racehorse. "He's also gorgeous. Simonsig is unbelievable. He jumps brilliantly and he's a little more laidback than Sprinter Sacre. So he's probably easier to ride. But I couldn't choose between them. They're up there with Moscow Flyer, my first real flagship horse [on whom Geraghty won his first race at the Cheltenham Festival, the Arkle in 2002, as well as two Champion Chase titles in 2003 and 2005]. Sprinter Sacre, Simonsig, Moscow Flyer. It's a bit like trying to pick a favourite from your children. You can't do it. They're all gorgeous."

The 33-year-old Irish jockey has already explained what Cheltenham meant to him as a boy growing up in Pelletstown, in County Meath, when the Festival was enough of an excuse for him to be given the odd day off school by a family which had bred the great Golden Miller, the only horse to have won the Gold Cup and the Grand National in the same year – 1934. Geraghty has also discussed most of his 25 winners at the Festival, in a record which has seen him win at least one race at Cheltenham for the last 11 years in a row. He won five at last year's Festival alone, matching a feat he achieved in 2003, but his eyes shine even more brightly at his Cheltenham prospects over the next four days.

Geraghty is also riding Bobs Worth, the favourite for Friday's Gold Cup, and various other horses which he describes as having "great chances". Yet Sprinter Sacre, in Wednesday's Champion Chase, is the shortest-priced favourite at Cheltenham in 50 years. Simonsig is also rated at miserly odds to beat his closest rival, Overturn, in Tuesday's Arkle. "They'll be nailed on when they're past the post first," Geraghty says. "You can't be complacent. You have to get the job done and celebrate afterwards. But we had a dynamite schooling session with them at [TRAINER]Nicky Henderson's yard this morning. Incredible. It was my first schooling spin on Sacre for a year and …fuck me …"

As the commentary from a mundane race card echoes from a tinny speaker above our heads, Geraghty brings out his phone. "Look at this," he says. "I shot a video of him this morning."

Even on a tiny screen, Sprinter Sacre, nicknamed "the black aeroplane", is a thrilling sight. "I was sitting on another horse trying to video him," Geraghty says of the shaky footage. "Look at him strutting. He's beautiful, unbelievable …"

Geraghty flips to the photos on his phone to show off some images he shot on the back on Sprinter Sacre. "I took these photos this morning," he says, as he shows a close-up of the back of the horse's head as they approach a fence. "I couldn't get many because the boss would be anxious to get going. But here I am with my gloves on trying to get the lock off the phone to take my pics. I kept hitting the wrong button. But that's the kind of thing this horse does. He gets you talking to him, and saying: 'Hold on Sprinter, let me get a couple of photos of you here …' And he's not a horse you want to be riding when you've not got your wits about you."

Sprinter Sacre appears so superior to every other horse in the field that, as he closes in on a seemingly inevitable victory in the Champion Chase, Geraghty might be tempted to whip out his phone to take a couple more snaps. "Take one for me, will you?" says Tom Jenkins, the Guardian photographer.

"You never know," Geraghty jokes. "This morning I had one last jump with Sprinter and, as we came up to it, I turned to one of the lads fixing the fence. Galloping past him, I just gave him a big smile and jumped. That's how Sprinter Sacre makes you feel."

Simonsig will be engaged in a more serious battle with Overturn – a front-runner who could trouble the odds-on favourite. "Overturn is also a very good hurdler," Geraghty says of a rival who has won on the Flat. "So it will be a real good clash."

Timeform, the renowned ratings organisation, currently ranks Simonsig ahead of where Sprinter Sacre was a year ago. Is it possible that the debate could be settled next year on the track with Simonsig moving up to the Champion Chase? "I hope not," Geraghty exclaims. "That would be too difficult a decision for me. They're both superstars. To get them in a couple of years of each other, let alone one lifetime, is amazing."

It seems as startling that Geraghty, according to the bookmakers, is more likely than anyone else to win the Gold Cup on Bobs Worth. "My brother and I brought him as a yearling," Geraghty explains. "But there's no big romantic story. He was a nice sort, not overly big, and he only cost 16 grand in Euros. So you're talking bargain stuff – but not bargain basement. He was a very nice mix of Flat and jumping pedigree. Nicky then bought him off me for £20,000 at the Doncaster sales."

So Geraghty never imagined that he had bought and sold a potential Gold Cup winner? "If I said yes I'd be down the sales again tomorrow," he quips. "He was clearly a lovely horse. He still is. He's not a superstar like Sprinter and Simonsig. He's unassuming. He doesn't do anything fancy but he always does what he needs to do. Moscow Flyer was like that over two miles. This fellow does it over three miles. There's no great extravagance about him but he has a tendency to come up trumps. But I'm really afraid of Long Run. I'd have him as my biggest danger."

Long Run, another Henderson-trained horse, won the Gold Cup in 2011 when he beat both Kauto Star and Denman, and the King George last December. He is owned by Robert Waley-Cohen – who allows his son, Sam, an amateur jockey, to ride him ahead of Geraghty. There is a good relationship between the jockeys and Geraghty makes a convincing argument on behalf of Long Run. "They talk him down, again and again, but he's really good and I think Cheltenham brings out the best in him. He broke the track record two years ago. So I'm very wary of him. I'll be afraid of [the Paul Nicholls-trained] Silviniaco Conti as well. But I'm happy to be on Bobs Worth."

Are his friends in the weighing room turning a sickly green when they see Geraghty's book of rides for Cheltenham – which also include fancied horses like Riverside Theatre, Oscar Whisky, Rolling Star and Grandouet? "Well, you can't go round being green with envy. It'll eat you up. There are ebbs and flows. Ruby [WALSH]has had his share over the years, as has AP [MCCOY]. Dickie Johnson and Choc [Robert Thornton] too. Jason Maguire [who will ride Overturn and went to the same school as Geraghty] has a good team. It comes and goes and you don't know what's around the corner. Enjoy it while it lasts."

Geraghty is acutely aware of where he stands in the roll-call of great Cheltenham jockeys. He is currently in third place alongside Pat Taaffe [who rode Arkle to three successive Gold Cups in the mid-1960s]. "We're both on 25 winners. AP has 27 and Ruby is out on 34. But I love being next to Pat on the Cheltenham roll of honour."

Tom Taaffe, Pat's son, trained Kicking King, whom Geraghty rode to his lone Gold Cup victory in 2005. The wins can blur but, to many, Geraghty's ride on Riverside Theatre in the Ryanair Chase was not just the undisputed performance of last year's Festival – but arguably his most astonishing triumph. "What's obvious is not always the greatest," Geraghty counters of a ride drooled over by the experts. "It was hard work. He never travelled and I got heavy traffic down the back straight. We were flat to the boards with four to jump. I'm pushing and shoving but he kept answering every call.

"It was a hard-fought victory but I'd always put more into tactics than physicality. I'd probably choose winning on Punjabi, a 22-1 rank outsider who beat Binocular and Celestial Halo in the Champion Hurdle [IN 2009]. We scraped it and any decision made differently might have cost it. When you have options and you choose the right ones it's very satisfying. I got a huge kick out of that."

Geraghty is different from his closest peers, such as McCoy, who are more complicated. "I'm a glass-overflowing fella," he says. "I'll always take the positive."

Do most jockeys struggle with demons? "Yeah. And to say I'm not battling myself would be a lie. I'm not battling hard but if you're a driven person there'll be some demons. A will to win is a demon in itself. Look at AP. He's chasing 4,000 winners now. AP will set 5,000 as his goal. For me, being a realist, the only aim I ever set was 1,000 winners. I'm on about 1,400 now. I'd like to get to 2,000 but AP's out there on his own."

McCoy insists that fatherhood has calmed him. Does Geraghty, who is a father of two girls aged seven and two, feel the same about himself since he and his wife Paula, a nutritionist, became parents? "It changes your perspective. The bad days aren't as bad. You close the door, your kids are there and it goes away for a while. If you are struggling with demons it helps. The demons tend to fuck off a bit."

Geraghty laughs – as he might do again just before he climbs aboard Simonsig, Sprinter Sacre and Bobs Worth. "I think I'll sleep easy all week," he says. "Cheltenham can be very relaxed if you're getting the results. But it wouldn't be Cheltenham if it was going to be easy. I'll be taking nothing for granted. But I wouldn't swap my fellas for anything else at Cheltenham. I've got the gorgeous ones all right."