Ruby Walsh: Davy Russell is on his last lap. Now it’s all down to pure luck

Jockey Davy Russell returns at Downpatrick after spending 11 months on the sidelines due to injury. Picture: Healy Racing

On October 11 last year, I lay on a couch in my sitting room watching the racing from Limerick with my wife, Gillian, on a rare Sunday off. We had had a Sunday roast, not a tradition in this house, and enjoyed the afternoon doing nothing. Isabelle was watching with us, our other girls were playing in another room, and as they hurtled to the first in the Munster National, I was content to be where I was.

Westerner Point just about rose in front at the first fence, but your eye was immediately drawn to Doctor Duffy in the middle of the shot, screwing to his right and colliding with Internal Transfer. My eyes were stuck to Doctor Duffy as he slithered toward the ground. I winced at the thought of what was coming for Davy Russell, heading to the floor in the front rank of a competitive field, at the first fence is a guaranteed kicking.

What transpired, though, was a fall I also knew too well. Davy stuck to Doctor Duffy all the way to the ground, declining the offer to exit right as he hung a little longer to manoeuvre himself into a position where a part of him that didn’t already ache would take the impact.

Then, bang. Gravity won - as it always does - and Davy was fired off to the left. With his hands below his hips, he went spear-like into the Limerick turf, headfirst.

I turned to Gillian and said Davy has just broken his neck. She replied with a shocked “oh no,” but I could tell it wasn’t a reply. It was a reaction to what we had just seen.

She knew, but neither of us knew how long he would be on the sidelines, maybe he did, but 11 months is a lifetime for a sportsperson.

At 41 years of age, plenty of people even questioned why he would consider a return. He has achieved so much, and why would he not just move on to enjoy life with Edel and their young family? How many more times can a person push their luck? He had missed paralysis by millimetres, and surely it was only a matter of time before a neurosurgeon would tell him the same.

The rumours rolled on but, all the time, Davy was staunchly defiant. He would return, and yesterday, after 340 days, Davy Russell returned to the racecourse as a jockey at Downpatrick.

He will have surprised many, defied others and proved some right, but for me, the only person he is proving anything to is himself. He is tough, old-fashioned because his emotions or feelings are seldom seen, but he is also on the last lap, which could be long or short, depending on his luck.

He teams up with his latest ally, Gordon Elliott. Both are back just in time for the Listowel Harvest Festival, but I doubt when either of them left there last September they could have imagined the 12 months they would endure before they returned.

Gordon will return many times, and by the time he does in 2022, he could well be where he was in 2020. Only Cheveley Park have departed his Cullentra stables with horses of note, but they did take his stars.

He found them before and will source them again, but that quality is tough to find, and he knows that too. He has known his return date since he got his suspension date, so expect him to have his horses in flying form for the next few weeks.

Envoi Allen and co may be gone from Gordon, but they may not necessarily have gone from Davy. His neck may have been broken for the last 11 months – physically, not proverbially - and he has some neck!

His ability to network and make phone calls won’t have deserted him, and he will at least have made a bid to keep the rides on the ones he had before the injury. He probably will have asked for the chance to ride them all, and they could well define Davy’s year.

Gordon will provide him with plenty of winners, but the young stock Gordon has is at least three, if not four, years away from being championship horses. He may well have some decent novices for this term, though no obvious championship horse. He will have dreamed of returning to the biggest stage, and when you have enjoyed Davy’s success, that is where he needs to be.

Is there a chance Davy’s whole comeback could hinge around Tiger Roll? Maybe it will, we all need to dream, and Gigginstown has finally consented to run him in condition chases to prove his mark should come down, so it will have by the time the Grand National weights appear in February.

That would be a fairytale, and maybe when you have dealt with the mental and physical trauma he has endured in the last year, that might be deserved but, either way, Davy got what he wanted yesterday.

He is back, but with time running out; Gordon is back but with more time in front of him than behind him.

For Irish racing, the scene is more competitive with both of them in it than out of it. One was unlucky, the other made his own bad luck, but I wish them both luck for now.