The rise and rise of a jockey who is head and shoulders over his contemporaries - literally

AT WELL over six foot, Andrew McNamara cuts a disproportionate figure for a National Hunt jockey. You get used to seeing the more, let’s say, compact jockeys coming and going from the weighroom, but the sight of McNamara emerging into the parade ring alongside his colleagues – literally head and shoulders above them – is a strange one.

Even more strange, perhaps, when you ponder the fact that his racing weight is not much above ten stone and realise that there is hardly an ounce of excess weight on a frame that is – theoretically – all wrong for a jumps jockey.

But the young Limerick rider has never let theory get in the way of his career and having really made an impact on the sport, first in 2006 when he won the Queen Mother Champion Chase at Cheltenham aboard John Murphy’s Newmill and the following season’s famous victory on Michael Hourigan’s legendary Beef Or Salmon in the Hennessy Gold Cup at Leopardstown (“my best racing memory”), McNamara was a hot riding property.