O'Brien reflects on battle with the scales

In an interesting conversation, principally with Ruby Walsh, Donnacha O’Brien provided an insight into the difficulties involved in making weight, that contributed to the decision of the dual champion jockey to hang up his boots. It came on last night’s RTE 2FM Game On radio sports show.

“It’s funny when you’re riding and you know you have to do light, immediately all you want to do is eat food. It’s all that’s on your mind,” said O’Brien.

“Even the last few months when I kind of knew I was going to stop I don’t care about food anymore because it’s not a novelty.

“It’s strange that way and you’ve just got to get your head used to it I’d suppose.

“I was regularly losing five/six pounds in the morning. That’s not too bad but it’s when you lose it and have to wait until nine o’clock that night to get a drink — that’s the hard part.

“It’s the keeping it off and not eating throughout the day that’s the hard part.

“Every jockey does it. Maybe some not to the extent of others. It’s not easy but I don’t want to blame my weight for making the decision (to retire) if that makes sense.

“When you’re in the race your adrenaline is up and it’s fine. I found though, that if I had a big ride that was light, and then I had maybe two hours to wait and then had another big ride that was light — it was the in between that was really hard.

“Waiting throughout the day and being dehydrated you can start to feel very very bad. There’s only a certain amount of time before it starts to get unhealthy realistically. It takes a toll and mentally it drains you as well.

“I’m now having to train myself when getting something to eat. Before every time I’d eat something I’d be thinking okay that’s 20 minutes in the sauna or I’ll have to not eat for 2 hours to get that out of my system.

“You have to retrain yourself to get used to being able to eat I’d suppose.”

Walsh made the comparison with his own situation - “I wasn’t able to cope with having to lose any more than three (pounds).

“My weight was kind of stable at ten stone to ten stone two every morning. If I had to lose five or six — I can feel the pain in my head already — of having to lose it and then trying to perform at it.

“I found the bath easier (than a sauna) — don’t ask me why. I found saunas dry, at least in the bath because it was water it was wet — it was much easier.”

Meanwhile looking to his training venture Donnacha O’Brien said: “I’m going to stick to the Flat. I’m in David Wachman’s old yard at Longfield and we don’t have too many boxes but it’s a beautiful facility and I’m obviously very lucky to be able to use it.

“Realistically business wise if you want to make money out of it I think Flat is the way to go unless you have a large number of horses and some good owners.

“This year we’re just hoping to get a few winners. We’ll keep things simple — trying to get the horses we have to run to the best of their ability.”