Inciting Rebelline

DIMINUTIVE and baby faced as he is, there is an obvious steel to Declan McDonogh.

It is the sort of steel which, in terms of great jockeys, separates the men from the boys and it has been tempered to a degree that has led many racing pundits, never the easiest to please, to recognise him as a serious talent and a man whose name will decorate many of the top prizes in flat racing in time to come.

Given that he is only 22 years of age and that flat jockeys have a fairly lengthy professional lifespan, with the dedicated ones invariably carrying on riding well into their 50’s, it seems certain one DP McDonogh will be a favourite of pin-stickers and punters for a long time to come.

Like so many in the racing game, McDonogh was born into it, his father Des being a legendary figure in National Hunt circles, having trained the great Monksfield to back-to-back Champion Hurdle successes in 1978 and ‘79.

Indeed, Des was an amateur rider of some note and his mother was, Declan recalls, “a very successful point to point rider and had, I think, 135 winners to her credit. She was one of the first lady riders to ride on a racecourse here in Ireland”.

That being the case, he readily admits that “racing has always been in my blood and I was never really going to do anything else. It is in the blood”.

Declan is youthful enough not even to remember the glory days of Monksfield’s Cheltenham exploits, but his youth is leading him down his own path of destiny, a destiny many feel will see him reach the peak of his chosen career.

That said, however, he knows his background is a key factor in his future and he wants to taste the sort of success his father attained in his career as a trainer.

“I was very young in the Monksfield days, but I’ve seen the videos, the photos and the cut-outs from the papers and it looked as if they were really great days. For the family it was certainly great to be associated with Monksfield and the champion he was.” It is not a real surprise when he reveals that: “everywhere you look in our house there’s a picture of Monksfield”.

But Monksfield was not the be all and end all in the family because after the horse had come and gone there was still a stable to run and Declan was thoroughly involved throughout his childhood.

Given his stature, it was probably pre-ordained that he was going to be a jockey. Indeed, the only surprise was that he became a flat jockey rather than a National Hunt pilot. Having initially been apprenticed to his father, he eventually came to the notice of Kevin Prendergast on the Curragh and that liaison is one which continues until the present day as McDonogh is the stable jockey at the Prendergast yard.

“I learned everything I know,” he reflects, “because I had the best tutors in the world in my father and mother, and I’m very grateful for that. I was apprenticed to Dad from the word go, but I rode a couple of winners for Mr Prendergast when I was starting out and he asked me to come down to the Curragh a few mornings a week to ride out for him. I just kept working for him and I got lucky because I became associated with a couple of nice horses. Kevin always had nice horses and it was a great opportunity for me.”

He explains that he always wanted to be a flat jockey, not that he had any particular racing idol, although he does admit that Michael Kinane was his favourite jockey when he was growing up.

“I always wanted to go down that road.” He quips that, “maybe it was the money or the easier life that attracted me to the flat”, but he also has “great respect for the jump boys because they have a real tough job.”

Visits to the much missed Phoenix Park track when he was a boy stimulated his interest in the flat and he readily admits that.

“I never really had a feel for the jumps and I was always going to be light anyway.”

He has been with Kevin Prendergast for about six years now, but this but admits that this season has been his best by far with a Group One winner in the Tatterstalls Gold Cup and two Pretty Polly stakes winners over the Derby weekend, two Group 2 wins and a Group 1 winner this year and a good few other Group 3 winners for good measure.

The horse that really shot him into the limelight however, is the filly he will race this weekend, Lady O’Reilly’s Rebelline, who shocked observers by not only winning the Tatterstalls Gold Cup ahead of Bach, Nayef and Tobougg. and ending Johannesburg’s unbeaten record in the Gladness Stakes.