Davy Russell on life after retirement, criticism and joining Dancing with the Stars
Davy Russell: “I would be very disappointed if for lack of effort I didn’t get as far as I could get.” Picture: Miki Barlok
Even the elves knew something was up.
Christmas is just a memory at this stage but just prior to the big day, the pair of elves on the shelves stationed in the Youghal home of former champion jockey Davy Russell each had a nice, shiny new pair of dancing shoes on. Well, 'tis the season.
Russell, 44, and his wife, teacher and former athlete, Edelle, are now gearing up for Dancing with the Stars, in which Davy will compete alongside Eileen Dunne, Rosanna Davison, Jason Smyth and others for the crown.
It could be a long campaign and Davy, retired from the saddle just over a year, is already feeling the competitive edge.
“I can only learn as quick as I’m learning and put in as much time as I can,” he says.
“It’s just something new. Learning to dance, being able to dance, is one thing, but to dance properly is a lovely thing to be able to do and I would like to put in enough effort to get a result out of that.”
That said, the Corkman admits he needed a little bit of a push when it came to donning the sequins and dancing shoes.
Seated beside him in their Youghal home is Edelle, and according to Davy, she was doing the pushing.
“I never in my life had an urge to dance the rumba,” he says. “Maybe it was because of Nina [Carbery, former contestant and fellow jockey], it was nice to be asked. It was during the summer and we agreed to it and now getting into the middle of it, it’s tough going and it’s a big commitment. You gather loads of respect for the dancers because the fitness and the level of expertise they have is, like, these just aren’t your ordinary dancers, these are a special group of people.
“It is definitely a learning curve anyway.”
Edelle says: “I always knew he could dance, but only at a wedding. It is very technical now — if you look at what he’s doing now and what we’d be doing if we were at a function, Davy would be the first on the dance floor and never needed a push but it was always to your style of music. [The Franks and Oasis, since you’re wondering.] But I said, you know what Davy, you have the rhythm, it’ll be a bit of fun, and you were just after retiring, not long, and it was something to look forward to and that people could follow.”
“I’m a bit like the Jamaican bobsleigh team,” Davy chimes in, referencing the classic no-hopers in the Winter Olympics who, in their own way, won out in the end, not least in being immortalised in the John Candy film classic Cool Runnings.
Yet, you get the sense that Davy isn’t entirely playing this for laughs.
There is certainly the consistent glint in the eye of a serial competitor, the type of person who can win the Grand National, triumph at Cheltenham and dedicate himself so thoroughly to a sport that — let’s face it — gave him more than a few broken bones.
Yet he contrasts his approach to the dance floor to the way he used to hit the start line when he was in the saddle.
“Everything I have ever done has been loose and kind of natural,” he says.
“As in, just let it flow. It was all just let everything flow, and now your feet have to be in certain places and your hands have to be in certain places and your elbow has to be at an angle and your front hand has to be at a different angle to your hips and all of this is with head up and loads of attitude. So all of that is alien to me but I am so, so lucky with my [dance] partner. She is an exceptional teacher.”
That would be Kylee Vincent, whose husband, Stephen, is also a pro dancer on the show, adding an extra dynamic to proceedings.
According to Davy, Kylee is “out of this world”, someone who has “unbelievable patience” and who views Davy’s lack of dance experience as an advantage.
It’s clear that his approach to the sometimes frenetic pace of the DWTS studio is going to be somewhat at odds with the almost mystical calmness he often employed on the racetrack.
“I used to always slow everything down,” he says, “relax, getting everything so relaxed. I loved riding horses that were a little bit free, that wanted to run and maybe you would find a happy medium with them, instead of telling them what to do. Once the horse was happy, I was happy, sometimes to my detriment,” he adds with a wry laugh.
“I was always really late in making up my mind what to do, I was a bit obsessed with form and going through things and every day from when I woke up to when I went to sleep I thought of nothing but what I was doing, but I would never make up my mind until the start of a race. It was all done on feel.
“It worked a lot of the time.”
Hearing all this, it’s tempting to view Davy as the horse and Kylee as the jockey in this new professional relationship. Yet he sees some similarities between his old gig and the new challenge, such as the soft eyes needed to get the panoramic view of everything, rather than staring at the ground or the floor.
He’s also still fit, wiry and intense, occasionally dragging on a vape.
DWTS presents “a different kind of fitness”, he says, and one of the obstacles is the wear and tear of all those years jumping fences — the broken bones, the bumps and bruises.
So while he is light and lean, he’s given regular reminders in rehearsal of past injuries. “My flexibility is limited, through injuries and things,” he says. “But I can feel myself getting fitter and fitter.”
One other aspect of DWTS can be the occasional sharp blast of criticism from the judges.
Over the years Davy has sometimes felt the burn of professional criticism, and he famously rebuked Michael O’Leary when the Ryanair boss averred that Russell’s short-term return from his initial retirement was — in his view — a mistake.
But it seems judges Loraine Barry, Brian Redmond and Arthur Gourounlian have nothing to worry about.
“Criticism, all my life, I took it as a positive,” Davy says. “You can either take it and work on it or... I can only say that they are experts and they know what they are looking at so, grand. You put in the work and you’re not good enough, you’re not good enough. Criticism where it has a value, I try and put a value on criticism so that it will only make you get better or work harder.
“Now, if someone off the street is telling me I can’t dance, I’m not going to spend too much time on that one...”
Ah, the competitor’s edge again. For all that, Davy seems like a man at ease with his new life — one that is often spent trackside but which also encompasses a growing passion for breeding horses, and other passions, such as his involvement in hurling4cancer, which has turned into a fundraising success and a way for ace hurlers, past and present, to amble out onto the pitch on a sunny day and play for fun.
Edelle — who has recently overcome a bout of viral meningitis — is braced for the renewed absences that accompany the show, but she is comfortable with it.
“We keep a calendar and Davy tries to pack in as much as he can, so if he has to go to Dublin for two days a week or two half days, Davy works the farm in the morning, goes up to Dublin, stays up rehearsing the following day and comes home, so he’s gone an afternoon and a morning.” The couple have four children together, and it’s “a busy house” according to Edelle — “every minute counts.”
But it works. According to Davy: “I can’t understand now how I found time to go racing.”
The children are already following in his footsteps, in the saddle, travelling around the country for meets. It’s all happening. And now it’s going to happen some more, every Sunday on our TV screens, taking us from winter into spring. Davy is ready.
“I was never one for saying I was going to win this, that, or the other, but I would be very disappointed if for lack of effort I didn’t get as far as I could get,” he says.
“So I would just put in so much effort into it and try not to leave anything behind. To be honest, I’m giving it everything.”
Maybe the elves were onto something.
- Dancing with the Stars returns tomorrow 6.30pm on RTÉ One
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
