Are you aged between 15 and 18, weigh under nine stone? Are you no more than five foot, four inches tall and have a keen interest in horses? Then the racing academy, which has just moved to new headquarters, may be the place for you. Eileen Battersby reports
So you want to be a jockey? Now, more than ever there are opportunities for a career that is demanding, dangerous, obviously not for big eaters, but is exciting beyond description. Few things in life compare with the thrill and privilege of riding a class horse at speed.
Horse racing epitomises the meeting of sport and top-flight industry. Irish trainers are training many of the finest horses in the world and Irish jockeys dominate the international elite. Business is booming, with more than 25,000 people employed in the various aspects of the industry. There is an unexpected problem - a serious lack of jockeys.
RACE - the Racing Academy and Centre of Education - established in 1973 and since then responsible for the shaping of many great jockeys, including Johnny Murtagh, is currently training 11 boys and four girls. The 10-month residential course, which begins each August, incorporates riding, horse care, conventional class work including maths and computer skills, as well as fitness and work experience riding out in a trainer's yard, but there is capacity for a further 15 students.
Since its inception, RACE had been based at Curragh House, on Dublin Road, just outside Kildare town, but carried out training in a variety of venues, including the Curragh Military camp. Now the academy has its own newly built facilities in a campus-like setting on about 25 acres of land which was formerly part of the National Stud. RACE's general manager, Clodagh Kavanagh, has a message that is simple and direct: "We have the best facilities and training on offer, but we need young people who want careers in horse racing".
The academy is a bit like a conservatoire for jockeys. It is a charitable trust, funded by a grant from Horse Racing Ireland and by 0.4 per cent of prize money won in Ireland, while the students are sponsored by FÁS. It has evolved over the years and emphasis is now placed on the wider development of the students who are young teenagers. Its aim is to prepare them for life as much as for a career on the track. The age limit is between 15 and 18, while the ideal height and weight specifications are strict - applicants must be under 57 kilos (9 stone) and ideally under five feet, four inches.
Several of the trainees are taller than that but they are very light and are all so young. When a skinny 15-year-old boy announces: "I started my diet today", you soon realise how serious a life commitment race riding is.
Part of the difficulty in securing good jockeys is that people are getting bigger and stronger - and heavier. The thoroughbred race horse, the definitive racing machine, is, for all its power and speed, a vulnerable entity.
Broken, ridden, in training, and raced often by the age of two, the flat racer requires the lightest of riders. National Hunt horses tend to be that bit bigger and stronger and older but many do start out on the flat.
Asked where they see their future, on the flat or as jump jockeys, the smaller trainees will say "flat". Padraig Beggy (16) from Dunboyne, Co Meath is a friendly character. When asked "why racing?" he smiles and says "my size". Until two years ago, he says, "I had never sat on a horse. I always loved them though. When I was 14 I spent the summer working at Owen Weldon's yard". Beggy is currently riding out for Kevin Prendergast. His ambition? "I want to be champion apprentice, that is if he keeps me on for the four years."
Race now has its own horses, all retired racers, seasoned campaigners, winners, who have done it all and are now enjoying life in schooling sessions in a new indoor arena and being ridden on the gallops by the young students.
It seems a dream opportunity. Applicants are assessed and invited to come on a two-week trial period. From these, a possible 30 may be selected. Attitude and determination are valued as highly as riding ability. Some of the students have only had limited riding experience before enrolling at the academy. Few, if any, have ever ridden a race horse. And in fairness to all good sport horses and ponies, the thoroughbred is an entirely different riding proposition.
Niall Byrne and Barry Walsh, the riding instructors, are both former jockeys, each having ridden some 60 winners, and both trained at RACE. Walsh believes the jockeys of today are "better, stronger, more skilled. A tactical brain helps make a good jockey a great one. Racing is a regulated sport. Show jumping isn't. Jockeys are very good riders. But it is a different style of riding."
Byrne looks for the will to win: a jockey needs an element of aggression and "some devilment". Each day the students rise at 5.30 and have breakfast. Each trainee then travels to their respective trainer's yard to ride out, or exercise, during the morning, four or five horses. This is the behind-the-scenes world of racing where the real work of training begins. The students ride alongside experienced exercise riders. But it is not just about riding: the students muck out, water and give hay to their charges as well as groom them. Having tacked up and ridden out, they then return to the stables, look after the cooling down of the first horse and then tack up their next mount and so on.
By 2 p.m., students return to RACE for class work and further riding. Later there will be a session on the simulator - a mechanical horse that replicates the movement of a horse at canter and gallop. It is a brilliant gadget and is used to develop the balance and leg strength needed for riding racing short and also to perfect whip skills.
On the day I visit, bright sunshine and vicious wind dictate the proceedings. Six aspiring jockeys, carrying their tiny racing saddles and blue saddle cloths, arrive in the stable block and begin to tack up. Aside from two of the boys, they are all very small, small enough to have to reach up to put bridles on horses averaging about 16 hands.
The preferred mounts are geldings and are former National Hunt horses. They have been volunteered by their owners, pleased to see them in active retirement rather than bored and forgotten in a field. Geldings tend to be less temperamental than mares, while former hurdlers and chasers bring their jumping skills to the sessions. The point to be made here is that the horses are not being trained - the riders are.
Mounting up in the stables, the students ride out past the silent earth mover - the workmen, still finishing off the premises, by agreement, disappear when the horses emerge. Into the new indoor arena, the horses move in single file, walk and trot. Two of them are sons of Sadler's Wells, Archive Footage and Blazing Spectacle. The six riders are good, one is particularly stylish. Charlene Perry from Bridgend in Wales, now 17, learnt to ride in a riding school. She show-jumped her Welsh Mountain pony.
Charlene's mother show-jumped at national level in Wales. "My riding began to come on when I was about 12 or 13. I show-jumped and enjoyed it. But I wanted to be a professional flat jockey." She arrived at RACE after following up an ad on the Internet.
Today she is riding Archive Footage, winner of the 1999 Ladbroke Hurdle at Leopardstown, a good horse and now a kind teacher.
The six horses warm up with little incident. They are fresh, stretching out effortlessly, mannerly enough, although there is a bit of skitting and bucking from Simulacrum as the riders shorten their leathers and begin taking some low fences. Anthony Freeman from Borris, Co Carlow is 15 and already looking tall by jockey standards. It is assumed he is destined for National Hunt racing. He has some trouble and comes off - landing, however, on his feet.
The schooling is fast moving, no pauses; Barry Walsh is the perfect instructor, sympathetic, encouraging and all seeing. There is a good atmosphere. The jumping session indoors is followed by easy, slow cantering outside on the gallops.
Derek McCormack from Athlone is 16 and could also end up taller than average. He has been riding since he was six. He learned to ride in a riding school, show-jumped his 14.2 Connemara pony and has hunted and "ridden a lot of fast ponies". His ambition? "To be a proper jockey, to start on the flat and probably move on to the jumps." He loves speed and also admits to being interested in cars. His mount is Derrymoyle, a very classy dark bay who later looks the best of the six out on the gallops.
Michael Fahy, a young-looking 16 from Claregalway, has a background in pony racing which he loved and show-jumping "which I didn't really enjoy". He admits his biggest worry is the fitness levels needed for racing.
"I hope to go for National Hunt, but I'm small so it may be the flat. I don't mind. I love the life. Horses are," - large gesture - "everything."
Donegal man Kevin Dorrian (16) from Fanad Head sums it up: "It's the thrill you get from riding horses. I always loved them and enjoyed the bit of riding I did. I'd jumped a bit but never competed. It was the careers teacher at school who said I should consider being a jockey. I learnt to ride here. I feel I've really improved."
A jockey is as good as the horses he or she gets to ride. And just as many talented horses in training never see the race track, never mind the winner's enclosure, many of the students will never reach the top. But they are positive: only two admit to ever feeling nervous. Riding a thoroughbred is a different experience, "they are faster, stronger, you have to hold them back, they want to run" says Charlene. "You really do learn something every time you ride a horse."