Colin Keane It is nice to have a trip to Hong Kong to look forward to next month, after getting an invitation to participate in the Longines International Jockeys’ Championship at Happy Valley on December 5. It’s very exciting. It’s a very big night over there. It’s an international competition where some of the best riders from around the world get the ride, so it’s an honour to be nominated for it. I’m very much looking forward to going out there and seeing what it’s all about. Ireland has a strong tradition in the competition. Johnny Murtagh, who was the one jockey I admired growing up as a fellow Meath man who rode for my father Gerry and my boss Ger Lyons, shared the title in 2009, while the likes of Michael Kinane and Pat Eddery took part as well. It will be my first time riding at Happy Valley so I will have to ask some of the Irish lads that have ridden out there before about it and look up some videos to see what style might suit or what types of horses are winning out there. It will be interesting to see the different styles of riders. The Irish and English racing is pretty much the same but the American and Japanese riders will be a little different. So that is something I’ll be looking out for. I will be going over for racing on the 5th, which is a Wednesday. If I’m lucky enough, I might pick up a few spares for racing on the Sunday as well. Even if I don’t, I’ll stay around and go racing for the day anyway, just to see it as a spectator. At the moment, apart from that, the plan is to spend the winter sticking to Dundalk for whatever Ger has to run and whatever we get outside of that. A big reason for not going further afield is that you like to be around when the yearlings come in and there’s a lot of work to be done with them in preparing for next year. Hong Kong was a long way from my mind when I was dreaming of becoming a jockey and it has been a great journey. I was surrounded by horses from a young age, with my father training and it’s always nice to ride a winner for him when I can, as I did most recently in Galway on Laughifuwant at the end of October. I started off in pony racing and rode 85 winners there before getting my licence and when my father decided to cut back on his numbers, my agent Ruaidhri Tierney got me into Ger’s and the rest is history really. I was champion apprentice in 2014 and just as he was then, Ger was the driving force in helping me become champion jockey last year, when I hit the 100-winner mark. This year wasn’t bad and I rode 84 winners. It was a good year but it didn’t feel that way after the one we had the previous year. It sounds a terrible thing to say but that’s just how it was. There were plenty good days of course and Who’s Steph winning the two Guineas trials was a highlight, along with the cracker she ran in the Group 2 Blandford Stakes at the Curragh on Irish Champions Weekend after being absent since May. As Ger said, it was a building year. We had mainly two-year-olds this year and there’s a lot to look forward to next year. There were some two-year-olds that only have run once and not even won that will make lovely horses next year. Ger was always going to be very patient with them and hopefully there’s a lovely bunch to look forward to next season as a result. There are between 40 and 50 in at the moment that will be two-year-olds next year and to look at them physically, they’re a good bunch of horses. What everyone is looking for is a stakes horses and it’s what we’re obviously looking for too. Hopefully, the patience Ger has shown will be rewarded with the three-year-olds and that there will be some real talent among the two-year-olds. So the dreaming has started and I’m already looking forward to the season getting under way. But we’ve a bit to go before that comes along. In the meantime, Hong Kong is definitely something to be excited about.
