Adam Ryan

I’m from Killenaule in Co Tipperary and I turned nineteen just last month.

My mother and Andy Slattery’s wife are sisters so that makes him my uncle by marriage. My own family work in construction and that was how I began working in Andy’s yard, which is only two minutes away from where we live. I was around 12 or 13 when I went there with my father to do some plastering on a new barn that was being built there. Andy’s brother Brian put me up on a horse called Eacharn and I trotted him down to the gallops with Brian running alongside me on the road. He then rode work on the horse and we repeated that process a few times in the next few days. That was my starting point as I wouldn’t have sat up on horses before then. There’s a horse simulator at the yard as well which I found very helpful.

I soon realised that this was the place for me and I’ve been in the yard since. I did my Leaving Cert a couple of years ago and, while attending school, I rode out one or two horses in the morning before heading to school and I worked weekends at the yard as well. I’ve been here full-time a year now and it’s a busy yard with Flat horses, jumpers and young horses ready to go point-to-pointing.

We probably have around twelve or fifteen horses being prepared for the autumn point-to-points and the same number of three-year-olds getting ready for the spring season of point-to-points.

There’s plenty to be done in the yard, be it schooling or riding work on the jumpers, riding work on the Flat horses or riding them out of stalls. We have good facilities at the yard but sometimes, to give the horses a change of scenery, we bring them away to work. The Flat horses go to Willie Browne’s place in Moyglass, which is ten minutes away, to use his five-furlong woodchip gallop while the jumpers sometimes go to Edward O’Grady’s gallops. I might ride pieces of Flat work two or three times a week and I enjoy riding over obstacles as well

I have known Andrew Slattery from a young age and I went pony-racing a lot with him and his cousin Ben Coen. There’s Ben’s younger brother Jake, and Cian Quirke as well, in the yard and we all drive each other on and give each other feedback on what we did right or wrong in races. Andy himself, Brian and Willie Slattery are all there too to give their opinions on how we rode particular races and I always try to take on board their advice. I look back at my rides as well and try to figure out what I might have done well or where I could improve.

I did pony-racing myself for a couple of years and you learn plenty by doing it, riding horses in big open fields, how to keep horses balanced around turns and how to give a horse a drive. I’ve ridden in point-to-points and have had a couple of winners in that sphere.

It was great to get my first winner under Rules when Next Week won a bumper at Killarney in August and I couldn’t believe it when I managed to win on my very next ride, Royal Creek, just a few days later in Ballinrobe. I came out on the right side of a driving finish against Patrick Mullins and my filly got home by a nose.

I’m on the four-winner mark for the season now and things have picked up well. It would be nice to get my first winner over hurdles or fences on the track and hopefully that will come soon. There are plenty of smaller trainers in the area that I go and school horses for. Although I don’t have an agent, Ken Whelan keeps an eye out and tries to find rides for me and I ring up various trainers for rides as well.

I’ve ridden at a wide variety of the racecourses in Ireland and I always try to get there early and walk the track before racing. There’s certainly no harm doing it and you can pick up little clues about where the ground might be softer or faster on various parts of the track. If it gives you a little edge like that, it’s certainly worth doing.

I enjoy working in the yard and race-riding. My weight is good, I can do 9st 7lb, and at the moment I want to keep picking up as many rides and winners as I can. I haven’t given any thought to turning conditional, and there are good opportunities for amateur riders, but it’s not something I’d rule out in the future.