Declan Murphy - Centaur: Shortlisted For The William Hill Sports Book of the Year 2017

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First published in Great Britain in 2017 by Doubleday
an imprint of Transworld Publishers
Copyright Declan Murphy and Ami Rao 2017
Design by Leon Dufour/TW
Horse photo iStock/mari_art

Declan Murphy and Ami Rao have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the authors of this work.

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Version 1.0 Epub ISBN 9781473542044
ISBNs 9780857524355 (hb)
9780857524362 (tpb)

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To You
For You
Forever You

If youre going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, dont even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, youll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If youre going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. Its the only good fight there is.

Charles Bukowski, Factotum

There is symphony in the movement of a horse.

The gallop, for example, is a four-beat rhythm: hind leg, hind leg, fore leg, fore leg.

You just have to listen for it, to hear it as I hear it, and you will realize how musical it is; how beautifully poetic.

This is the gait of the racehorse; it strikes off with its non-leading hind leg, then the inside hind foot hits the ground before the outside fore, but just by a split second. The movement concludes with the striking off of the leading leg, followed by a moment of suspension when in glorious majesty all four hooves are off the ground. Even at 35 or 40 mph, when the animal appears to be flying, it follows this classic, controlled cadence. In truth, it is not flying at all; it is dancing.

Hind leg, hind leg, fore leg, fore leg.

I can hum it in my head.

I have always followed this beat when I ride, moulding my body to the rhythm of my horses stride pattern. And in this way, we have understood each other, my horse and I, our bodies in perfect sync, the energy between us reverberating like the silent echoes of an unspoken voice.

This is how I have always ridden. By an instinct, deep and wonderful.

It never failed me. Until the day it did.

May Day Monday, 2 May 1994 was a typical spring day at Haydock Park. The sun was shining brightly through a cloudless azure sky, the stands were packed with holidaymakers looking to have a grand day out. A gentle breeze blew across the racecourse, carrying happy voices, the tinkling of glasses, the familiar, very particular, scent of the horses

Ominous feelings seemed improbable in an atmosphere like that. And yet, I was troubled. Just the day before, Ayrton Senna had died in a fatal crash at the San Marino Grand Prix.

I was haunted by this, by the emotions swimming around inside my head like demons. I couldnt quite compute them. At the most simplistic level, a life had been lost. That in itself was profoundly tragic. But it was more than that. Senna was no ordinary man. Three-time Formula One World Championship winner, he was considered by many to be the single greatest racing driver of the modern era. And yet, he had died.

What was more ironic, adding to the layers of sadness and confusion I felt over Sennas passing, was that Senna himself had been under immense emotional pressure on the day he died, following the death of Formula One colleague Roland Ratzenberger just one day prior. It was later revealed that a furled Austrian flag was found in Sennas car, which he had presumably intended to raise in honour of Ratzenberger after the race. That was never to be.

It was little wonder that Sennas death had cast a pall over the entire sports world. After all, we are all conditioned to believe that our heroes are invincible.

To me, it was deeply unsettling, perhaps because for the first time in my life, it brought home the stark reality of my own mortality.

I dont say this lightly. I dont say it with ignorance and I certainly dont say it with arrogance. I am just telling you the truth.

Yes, of course I knew that, like Senna, I was in a dangerous sport. But if you asked me if I had ever thought about death, I could look you in the eye and honestly say I hadnt.

Not because I didnt think it possible. Only because I did.

My teammate was a 1,200-pound animal, whose will I attempted to control at 35 mph. So to say that my profession was fraught with danger would be an understatement. But I was acutely aware of this. I approached race-riding with intuition and intelligence, equally split; there was no room for fear in this equation. I am not saying that I was fearless. How could I be? Im only human. But I couldnt afford to consider fear as part of my reality. Fearing fear would have been as good as quitting. So I conquered fear with belief. I rejected fear. I shunned it. And to the extent I could, I tried to keep it at bay.

That I had suffered fewer falls than most of my colleagues was no coincidence. I was deliberate, measured and tactical. I would ride, feeling my horses rhythm, the beat of its movement; I would time my every stride, approaching my obstacles with almost academic precision.

But the horse is an animal. An intelligent, unpredictable animal; a combination that can be as exhilarating as it can be deadly. And not even the most controlled and skilled jockey can predict which one it will be and when. So while I knew, as all jockeys do, that broken collarbones were lucky, death sad but not impossible, I certainly didnt want to think about it.

But Senna, uncomfortably, had forced me to.

These were the thoughts in my head as Jim Hogan, my friend, driver and former European champion distance runner, drove me up on that beautiful spring morning to the racetrack at Haydock Park for the Crowther Homes Swinton Handicap Hurdle.

On arriving at the racecourse, as was customary, I went into the weighing room and sat down in my place. Next to me was Charlie Swan, Irish champion rider, my rival and my friend.