Emma Connolly

I started riding horses when I was 11 and I just couldn’t see myself ever doing anything else. I’m in Noel Meade’s nine years now and have been lucky to be associated with some brilliant horses over the years and have got some great memories.

It was just by chance one day that a farrier friend of mine rang me and said that Noel was looking for staff, I was looking for a job at the time and I’ve been there ever since. I’ve looked after horses like Apache Stronghold, Muirhead, Texas Jack and Snow Falcon is my dude at the moment. You get attached to them all - good horses or horses with not so high ratings - they all have their own little character. If you didn’t get attached to them you wouldn’t be doing it. People always say, of course you get attached to the good horses, but trust me, you’d be just as dedicated to the lesser rated horses because they all have their own personality and quirks.

My biggest thrill in the sport would have been Apache Stronghold winning the Grade 1 Flogas Novice Chase. Any day you have a winner is a good day but he was my first Grade 1 winner to lead up, there’s been lots of good days but that was a very special day and it’s why you do this job.

People would look at you starting early mornings, late evenings, going in on your Sunday’s off to ride out the horses you look after and just the pure commitment of the job and think you are mad. It’s very hard to plan anything because you just don’t know where you are going to be, it’s just a busy lifestyle. But you don’t do this job for the social life really, you do it because it is a passion and we love working with the horses and I’m very lucky in Noel’s we have a great team of staff and Noel is a great man to work for. This is a very rewarding lifestyle but it can be hard to explain that to people not into racing.

If you didn’t enjoy it you couldn’t do it. When you go racing with four or five horses, whether it just up the road at Navan or down to Killarney and not getting home until the early hours of the morning, if you can have a winner any day it just makes the day fly and the drive home so much more enjoyable and shorter.

Noel has a lovely team of young horses here at the moment and Road To Respect ran a brilliant race in the Cheltenham Gold Cup so hopefully there’s plenty to look forward to with him.

For a meeting like Cheltenham there is always a huge lead up to it and you’d always be a bit anxious in the weeks beforehand that nothing would happen and everything would go right. You just want to get the horses there in once piece and see what happens then.

Depending on what Noel runs in Aintree I think I’m going over there on Wednesday and Thursday and you’d be mad if you weren’t looking forward to being involved in an occasion like that.

I love Snow Falcon to bits and he ran a cracker at Aintree last year and hopefully there might be a Grade 1 in him soon. I’ve done everything with him since he was a baby so it’s wonderful to see him progress and travel with them and whether he goes to Aintree or Punchestown hopefully he can run a big race. That would mean the world to me. I’m pretty competitive.

That competitiveness has got the better of me and now I’ve decided to have one last ride on the track. I rode a bit as an amateur when I was younger but unfortunately never rode a winner - third was as close as I got.

I stupidly said last year that I’d love to have one more go and I kind of half threw my name into the hat for the Punchestown Kidney Research Fund Charity Race and then when it came around I said that I might as well give it a go and have one last go… I’m not in it to take part… I’m in it to win it!!!

I’m not sure what I’ll be riding yet, it will be for Noel and if we decided to give me Snow Falcon that would do me!!!

Aside from that though the Charity Race at Punchestown is a great event and is going for over 20 years for a great cause and people have been very good to me with sponsorship, including Steven Clements who runs SC Cozy Cabins and has sponsored me for all my gear on the day.

All joking aside though if I finish in the first six and don’t make a clown of myself I’d be happy. I haven’t ridden in a race in about 10 years since I did my cruciate playing camogie. I stopped riding in races after getting that reconstructed so it’ll be good to go back and give it one more lash and see what happens. I’ve given enough jockeys abuse over the years so I’m sure they’ll be queuing up to get their own back on the Saturday of Punchestown!