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November 30, 2007
He may have been deposed as Irish champion jockey in 2007, but it was another fruitful season for Moynalty jockey Declan McDonogh and he looks forward to more success in the coming year - including one horse which could go all the way to Classic success in 2008. By Shane Breslin.
He may never have been champion apprentice but Declan McDonogh announced his quality on the stage that really mattered: lifting the jockeys' title itself, in November 2006. The Moynalty jockey muscled his way to the top of his sport by pipping regular contender Pat Smullen to the championship before being named Flat personality of the year at the annual Horse Racing Ireland awards.
Compared to those lavish successes, it was always going to be difficult to maintain the upward trend of the career graph in 2007. Smullen regained the championship in November, but McDonogh finished the season well to claim the runners-up spot behind his rival and cemented a reputation as one of the brightest young talents in Irish racing.
"Winning the title was marvellous," said Declan, speaking to Royal County in September. "It was a great year, but it seems such a long time ago now. The highlight was Miss Beatrix in the Goffs Million, a new race with a million in prize money, and she was the first winner, so that was definitely the most valuable winner for me."
In addition to the jockeys' title, 2006 also saw McDonogh enter the winners' enclosure at Royal Ascot for the first time, aboard the Sylvester Kirk-trained Elhamri. But winning million-euro races at the Curragh and being led through the top hats at the royal meeting were a long way from his beginnings in Moynalty.
Although the hectic nature of life at the top of his sport can make it difficult, he still tries to follow the progress of the village Gaelic football side, which in 2007 saw Moynalty reach the quarter-finals of the Junior 'B' Championship before going down in extra-time at the hands of Wolfe Tones.
"My own football career was limited to school and a bit of underage," he admitted, "but I follow the lads and they're doing well. I pick up the Meath Chronicle whenever I can to keep in touch."
If his time in football was limited, his career in racing is anything but. He was born into the life, the son of Des, a trainer forever synonymous with the great Monksfield, who won two Champion Hurdles and three Aintree Hurdles in three blissful years in the late 1970s, and one corner of a triangle of hurdling greats, completed by Night Nurse and Sea Pigeon, which took racing to the masses.
Declan is not yet 28, so his memories of those days come from video recordings and hearsay, but if he missed out on the exhilaration of having a champion in the yard, his own breeding made racing a natural choice.
"With my father training, I was on a horse from an early age," he said. "I was racing every day - there was never anything else I wanted to do. It was a great upbringing and it really grounds you to have animals around the place. Nowadays you don't get that as much, not a lot of children spend as much time with animals anymore, which is sad."
His first winner came at the age of just 15, aboard one of his father's charges, Aine's Pet, in the Derrinstown Apprentice Handicap at Leopardstown, and the trajectory has been steadily upwards ever since.
His first big race success was on Polaire, which he steered to a surprise success in the Group Two Pretty Polly Stakes at the Curragh in 1999, but it was another filly trained by his boss Kevin Prendergast which gave him the chance of a big breakthrough.
He recalls Rebelline with fondness, the partnership landing the Pretty Polly in 2001 and remaining intact to annex Listed and Group Three successes the following year en route to their crowning glory, victory in the Group One Tattersall's Gold Cup at the Curragh in May 2002. "Rebelline was definitely the most influential [in my career]," he said. "I was just in the right place at the right time I suppose, and she helped me along."
In his years as an apprentice with the Prendergast stable, McDonogh's conditional rivals and contemporaries included Eddie Ahern and Jamie Spencer, both of whom have gone on to success in England. In November, Spencer shared the jockeys' title with Seb Sanders, adding to the championship he won outright in 2005.
But for the time being at least, McDonogh has no ambitions to follow his countrymen across the Irish Sea. "People always say that," he says, "but I think I'm doing pretty well here. Irish racing is in a healthy state at the moment. The prize money is not as good over there, and there is a lot more travel involved. English racing is not all it's cracked up to be, and unless you got a big job it's not something I'd think about."
Looking ahead to 2008, Declan would like to be able to wrest the jockeys' title away from Pat Smullen once more. Among the horses to which is particularly looking forward to renewing acquaintances is Kevin Prendergast's Mores Wells, who finished third behind Aidan O'Brien's star stayers Yeats and Scorpion in the Irish Field St Leger at the Curragh in September. The Sadler's Wells colt progressed from a maiden success at Leopardstown in April to gain two successes at Group Three level before his gallant effort in the final Classic of the domestic Flat calendar, and McDonogh feels he could improve on that next time around.
"It was always the plan to go for the Irish race [rather than the English Leger]," he pointed out. "He ran a good race considering he was just a three-year-old. Looking at the way the English one panned out [where Lucarno, a colt with a similar rating to Mores Wells, was first past the post] if he had been in that he would have been there or thereabouts. Maybe next year he'll have a better chance in the Irish race and I'm looking forward to riding him."
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