Shane Crosse

To ride two group winners last weekend was deadly. Unreal. You can’t dwell on it too much as you have to kick on again for the next day but to get those opportunities and experience that as an 18-year-old apprentice is almost unbelievable.

It was great for the family. My brother Nathan is having a very good year this year too and none of it would have been possible without our parents’ support.

Dad (Matt) is a former jump jockey who plied his trade in Ireland, England and America and works for Jessica Harrington. He was with Tommy Stack and Joseph O’Brien before that and is loving being back directly involved with the horses again and going racing. His role was more about organising with Joseph and he just missed that direct involvement.

Mam (Bernadette) is mad into it too. She was always involved at home. She would be all around the country pony racing. You could be in Kerry one day and in Donegal the next day. It wasn’t easy but we were only 13 or 14. They were very good at giving us days off school to go racing. They understood what we wanted to do.

Dad got us a pony. I started messing around with him and taking him racing on a Sunday. Nathan is older than me but he didn’t start riding until he saw the craic we were having. He has done really well now that he is getting the opportunities.

I have been lucky since I started. I had my first winner on G Force for Adrian Keatley in Naas in April of last year and went on to be champion apprentice.

Obviously, having Joseph’s backing is huge. I started at Stack’s because Dad worked there and when he moved to Joseph’s I moved with him. I spent a summer there while I was riding away in pony racing.

I told Dad I was going to ask Joseph would he keep me going but before I got around to it, he pulled up alongside me in the field, asked how I was getting on with the pony racing and would I like to stay on. That was the last day of the summer. It was brilliant.

We get on really well, and he is great craic. Obviously he has ridden in so many races, so many Group 1s and Classics. He knows what can happen in a race that other trainers might not. He mightn’t always say it to you if you have made a mistake, he takes it that you should know yourself at this stage. He is very good, very laidback. He gives you a few instructions and that is it, it’s up to you.

Having Dad’s advice is massive too. He is the one that thought us how to ride. He was at home riding out with us. We used to have breakers and pre-training horses at home. He was always loading ponies into the lorry and we would head off racing every Sunday.

There was a bit of pressure on before the Renaissance Stakes as Speak In Colours was favourite. But he is a lovely old horse. Once he had done the job it was easy to ride New York Girl in the Weld Park Stakes the next day because I went home on Saturday and I was on cloud nine. That wasn’t really expected but we knew she was a nice one. She was actually due to run in Gowran the other day when it was called off due to the lightning. But thank God it did happen.

She is the type that would have you dreaming about what’s possible next year given that this was only her second run and she might be even better on better ground but I am realistic enough to know that there are no guarantees I would be on her.

Joseph would use his brother Donnacha a lot and Wayne Lordan too. Donnacha is the number one jockey so you can’t be giving out. I know how lucky I am to have the opportunities that Joseph gives me.

After all, I was champion apprentice last year and I won two Group 3s last weekend.

Being champion wasn’t the target but things were going so well. I rang my agent, Kevin O’Ryan and he said we will give it a go. Joseph copped on to I was getting close. We all stuck together and pulled it out of the bag. It was mad.

My goal for this year was to beat last year’s tally. I rode 27 in the season last year and I am on 24 now. But two of them are group races, so you’ve got to be happy with that. But you can never rest on your laurels in this game, so I will keep working hard and hopefully keep building it up.