The boys are back in town after the worst year of their lives.
That road would be paved with physical torment for the former and mental anguish for the latter. Both even faced the prospect that they might never again be able to do the thing which they do and love best.
But in the last fortnight the fog has finally cleared. They are back in the arena. Normal service will be resumed.
Russell’s physical ordeal over the past 11 months has been extreme even by the adamantine standards of his trade. When Doctor Duffy fell at the first fence of the Munster National in Limerick last October the Youghal jockey’s injuries looked career-ending.
The fractured and dislocated vertebrae might even have led to permanent disability. In Russell’s words he’d “dodged a bullet”. But, having dodged it, he was determined to put himself back in the firing line.
His initial treatment included having holes drilled in his skull and weights hung from his head to bring the vertebrae back into proper alignment. A couple of months in a neck brace followed as the battle to recapture racing fitness began.
What made the struggle even tougher was that Russell is at an age when many jockeys have already called it a day. He’s 42 now, his great rival Ruby Walsh retired at 39 while Tony McCoy quit at 40. Why make all that effort in the twilight of a great career?
Russell says it’s because “it’s important to go out on your own terms,” something he explained to Walsh when the latter wondered about the wisdom of his decision in a fascinating exchange on RTÉ some months ago.
He didn’t hide the intensity of his desire to keep riding because what makes Russell such an attractive character is his extreme openness. Russell epitomises someone you often meet in life but rarely see represented in the media, the countryman who puts everything out there on the surface. He does not construct a persona for public consumption. What you see is what you get with Davy Russell.
The comeback took place at Downpatrick on Friday of last week. The following day he won at Navan. The next day he won at Listowel. The day after that he won at Listowel again. This is what he has always done.
Those three winners were trained by Gordon Elliott whose own comeback took place at Punchestown three days before Russell’s Downpatrick return.
It’s striking how little attention was paid to that comeback outside racing circles given that just six months ago the photograph of the trainer sitting on a dead horse was treated as a kind of sporting 9/11.
An unprecedented amount of social media abuse was directed at Elliott, pundits hurried to kick him while he was down, we heard that this incident would do perpetual damage to the sport and there were impassioned pleas that he be banned for life.
How bizarre it all seems now. The fact that most of those protesting their outrage at the time didn’t even notice the trainer’s return says a lot about the transient nature of these things. Fresh victims have taken Elliott’s place. More fun was to be had elsewhere. Those most hysterical in condemnation have forgotten about the man whose fate briefly seemed so important to them.
Yet Elliott’s life came close to being ruined for what was in the final analysis not much more than an ill-judged moment of occupational black humour. Among his few defenders at the time was Russell whose appearance on Prime Time was the subject of much snobbish disdain, his usual raw honesty judged out of place in a forum where polished evasion is the order of the day.
There was a snobbishness too in the frequency with which the ‘gentlemanly’ nature of other leading trainers in comparison to Elliott was invoked at the time.
The trainer’s inability to emulate the squire-like bearing of Willie Mullins, Henry de Bromhead, Nicky Henderson et al is the result of his status as the sport’s great self-made man. The son of a panel beater who had to work his way up from the bottom rung was never likely to adopt the same patrician air as his professional peers.
Cut from the same kind of straightforward no-nonsense rural cloth as Russell, Elliott is an inspirational figure in his own right. One photograph does not diminish the magnitude of his achievement.
So I have little time for the whinging that Elliott should have got a longer suspension and isn’t sorry enough for his offence. The real test, said the Guardian, will come at next year’s Cheltenham.
But the truth is that Elliott’s reception at that festival will be no test at all. The days when any Irish person’s worth depended on English opinion are long gone.
Elliott isn’t the first horse racing figure to suffer the wrath of the lynch mob. Russell had a brush with it four years ago when he punched a horse before a race in Tramore. And back in 2018 the jockey Ger Fox, banned for taking cocaine, said: “The way it was being talked about was like I’d killed somebody. I felt like a murderer.”
Yet Fox recalled, “Fair play to Ruby Walsh and Davy Russell, they both came up to me and put their arms around me. They told me to keep my head down, keep working and that I’d be back in time. I really appreciated it.”
Those who’ve stood by Elliott include Alex Ferguson who contacted the trainer and told him to keep going while reminding him that Eric Cantona had once been the subject of similar coverage after kicking a Crystal Palace fan, an incident also decried as unforgivable in its time. The dogs bark, the caravan moves on.
There’s a certain rightness about seeing Elliott and Russell triumph at Listowel. The Harvest Festival is one of the great Irish communal sporting occasions yet last year for the first time it took place in front of empty stands. This year there are spectators again as Listowel, like the rest of the country, inches back towards some kind of normality.
Over the last 18 months we’ve all had to pass tests we couldn’t have imagined the day Tiger Roll won the Grand National. The country fell, felt the pain, picked itself up, didn’t despair and worked hard. Now a comeback looms.
Davy Russell’s fighting spirit is the Irish spirit at its best. We can all do with a bit of it.
All aboard for yet another white elephant
The Ireland 2024 Americas Cup bid is in the great tradition of the Bertie Bowl, the Gay Mitchell Olympics, the Rugby World Cup and Dublin City Council’s white water rafting white elephant. Irish politicians love this kind of grandiose project.
Meanwhile there’s a grave shortage of public swimming pools, many primary schools lack indoor sports facilities and Kellie Harrington’s home club has had to turn away girls eager to emulate the Olympic gold medallist because it doesn’t have toilets for them.
So it beggars belief that the government are considering spending at least €150m on a minority sport event with the potential to cost even more. Auckland, which hosted the last race, reported losses of €90m and the city of Valencia is still paying the debts it incurred in 2007.
The optimistic projections of the event’s supporters are illustrated by the Cork Chamber of Commerce President Paula Cogan’s statement that the Americas Cup will have “900 million viewers.” It’s true the event was broadcast and streamed to a potential audience of 941 million but the dedicated audience – people who actually watched it – came in at 69 million between November and March. An Irish Americas Cup would be the marine equivalent of the National Children’s Hospital fiasco.
Pressure cooker atmosphere is ideal for O’Gara
Suggestions Ronan O’Gara is enduring a crisis at La Rochelle are wide of the mark even if the French club did lose its first three league games. With Toulouse, Racing and Clermont providing the opposition and two of the defeats by less than a five-point margin he is hardly panicking just yet.
La Rochelle still look a good bet to be contesting honours by the end of the season though that cruel start to the schedule is in stark contrast to the more leisurely opening enjoyed by managers here. While the big tests come thick and fast for O’Gara our provinces can ease their way into the season against mediocre opposition from Wales, Scotland, Italy and South Africa.
That’s not to say the games played by O’Gara’s home province will be without interest. With Johan van Graan in the last chance saloon, Simon Zebo returning home, Gavin Coombes bidding to build on an extraordinary breakthrough season and RG Snyman primed to finally play, there should be plenty of intrigue surrounding Munster’s first few games.
What there won’t be is any of the intensity which O’Gara will regularly encounter as he continues his audition for the Ireland job.
