Johnny Allen pictured at Tramore in 2006 © Photo Healy Racing
It is unreal the way my life has unfolded since I left Ireland to try and find more work as a jump jockey in Australia.
On Saturday, I won my sixth Group 1 on the flat and fourth in the last seven months when Kenedna took the spoils in the Doomben Cup, just five weeks after we had combined to claim the last championship race of the Sydney Carnival at Randwick, the Group 1 Coolmore Legacy Stakes.
It was an overdue first Group 1 for Kenedna and she clearly has gotten the taste for it now. I suppose I have too and it was nice to win a Group 2 on the same day and follow up with a treble on Sunday. It was funny in a way because I won a Group 2 on Kenedna at Flemington last November on the same day I rode Trap For Fools to hold off Joseph O’Brien’s Irish Derby winner Latrobe in the Group 1 Mackinnon Stakes, one of the major races of the Melbourne Carnival campaign.
It all seems a long way away from when I was struggling at home trying to make it as a jump jockey. The world has gotten a lot smaller and the fact that I was beating Joseph in Australia, having worked in a different life on The Hill myself was another indication of that.
The love of horses came from home. My mother taught in the pony club and we had ponies since we were able to walk. All of our friends had ponies. It was the thing to do around Araglen when we were younger. When I was 12 or 13 I started working with Sean O’Brien on the weekends and summer holidays. He was my first introduction to racehorses. Sean and his family have always been very supportive of me.
I came through pony racing and spent three months with Pat Doyle, where I learned a lot about schooling horses.
In October 2002, I moved to Piltown to work for Frances Crowley but she moved to the Curragh a few months later and her father Joe took over. He scaled the operation down but I had three or four good seasons and won some big handicaps for Joe on Delgany Rose and Golden Storm.
I rode my first winner for Frances in February 2003, on a horse called Permiya in Clonmel and it was only 11 months later that Charles Byrnes legged me up on Dromlease Express for us to win the Pierse Hurdle. I finished second to Robbie Power in the conditional jockeys’ table that season.
The next couple of years went nicely and it was great to win a Listed chase on Strong Project for Sean O’Brien at Thurles. But after clocking up 26 winners in the 2005/2006 season, Joe retired and I had lost my claim. The winners began to dry up and then so did the rides.
I first came out to Australia to work in 2011 after I had seen an advert in the paper. Ken Whelan and Stephen Gray flew over on the same plane. I said I would go for the season and see what happened. I always had the desire to do a bit of travelling and had been in Australia seven years earlier as part of the Irish team for the annual jockeys’ challenge.
I was at the point of my career at home where it was nearly time to go down a different avenue, move to England, America or Australia or even go training. The opportunity came up to go with Australia. It was a big decision to go but I was pretty enthusiastic to take it up.
Darren Weir was anxious for me to come back when I went home after the first season so I did and he was very good to me. He gave me the ride on Gotta Take Care and we won 10 times together. In 2014, I won the Grand National on Wells and two Grand Annuals at Warnambool for Ciaron Maher, who Ruby Walsh rode Bashboy for to win the Grand National in 2015 and is now joint trainer of Kenedna with David Eustace.
I was doing well but there just isn’t enough jump racing in Australia. Darren had a huge flat yard, I was never that heavy, so I only had to get my weight down a little to be able to ride on the flat. That provided more opportunities.
It was slow progress. Jump jockeys wouldn’t be as respected here as they are at home. It took a while for owners to be positive about you riding the horses and to want you to ride them. When I started out first I was the Irish jump jockey trying to get rides on the flat. It took a good while to build up a relationship with different owners and trainers so they looked at you as a flat jockey.
My first couple of Group 1s came in the South Australia Derby for Darren and they were great but to win two at the Melbourne Cup Carnival last November was something else. There were 90,000 people in Flemington when I won the Victoria Derby on Extra Brut. The Legacy Stakes in Sydney was the same day as Winx’s last race and the final day of the championships. There was a sellout crowd. To be winning on those days, it’s like winning at Royal Ascot or as I said at Melbourne because it was big jumps races I dreamed of winning, it’s like winning at Cheltenham.
As is well known now, Darren has begun a big suspension. I had become reliant on him, hadn’t needed to work for anyone else but since he has gone, I have had to get myself out there a bit and get around to different trainers.
A lot of the relationships I created with owners have continued as the horses moved to different trainers and Kenedna is an example of that. I had ridden her all through her three -year-old career at Darren’s.
When you reach Group 1 level you want to try and stay there. I still ride in a few races over jumps but I’m fairly selective now. I have a few rides at the Warnambool Carnival but you don’t really want to be risking injury.
I will be back home in Cork in July as I try to be every year but for the foreseeable future, I will continue riding in Australia. I can’t see myself coming back home to ride, not on a full-time basis anyway. Things are just going so well, I have built up a good bank of contacts.
It isn’t where I thought I would be but it is a level every jockey wants to be at. I just hope I can keep it going now.
