The baby-faced assassin
In fact so youthful does he look that when he occasionally comes across a Garda checkpoint in his top-of-the-range car, the inevitable inquiry is: ‘Is this your car?’ or ‘Does your father know you’re out in his car?’
Similarly, he can hardly go into a pub without being asked for identification, but what few people realise is that behind the baby-faced looks beats the heart of one of the most talented riders of this generation in Irish racing.
The career of the young man from Shanagolden in Co. Limerick has been short but incredibly successful and his rise to the top of his profession has been almost dizzying in terms of the momentum it has shown.
He won two successive amateur titles almost immediately on graduating from the jockey’s apprentice school RACE (picking up an Irish Examiner Junior Sports Star award in 2006 on the way) and over the last five seasons has racked up nearly 150 winners and well over €2m in total prizemoney. His future as a top rank flat pilot is already assured.
Like so many contemporaries, he got into the sport via the pony racing circuit having “fallen in love with it” at the age of just five after seeing a cousin racing.
The youngest of seven children, his dad then bought him a pony – Ginger – when he was six and he entered his first race when he was nine. “I was too small even then – I’m only 5’1” but I was really tiny then and I stayed away from it ‘til I was thirteen or so, but from the time I was eleven I knew I wanted to become a jockey.”
He did not know it then but the legendary Kevin Prendergast would become a central figure in his development as a jockey.
The Curragh handler picked Hayes up when he qualified from RACE, which had been an acceptable compromise for his parents when he left school after the Junior Cert. His mum wanted him to finish out his schooling, but Chris and his dad persuaded her that doing the apprentices’ course at RACE was the right move.
“While I was there I got work experience at Kevin Prendergast’s and I’ve been there ever since. He has been great to me, but I don’t really know what it was he saw in me initially. I was nice and light and small and that was exactly what Kevin wanted.
“Straight away he put me up on yearlings and I was able to hold my own. I was there five months before I graduated to work riding, but he obviously liked what he saw because he signed me up as an apprentice the day I graduated from RACE and I rode my first race eleven days later. You’d always hope for those sort of breaks, but I never honestly thought it would happen as quick.”
Prendergast promised Chris’ parents that he would try to get the boy a few rides to get him some on-track experience that year, but Hayes ended up with 84 rides and eight winners. Not bad going over the course of just half a season.
The young man reckons he got “great opportunities” at the yard and he says he followed the trainer’s simple advice to ‘turn up on time, work hard, don’t mess around and do your bit.’
“I was never in the bad books from day one and I think that’s because I had good people advising me and I copped on quickly. I knew what I had to do and I did it. I was determined to start off on a good footing and keep it that way,” he says.
The Galway Festival provided Chris Hayes with a big early winner and in what was only his tenth ever race ‘under rules’ he won a €100,000 handicap at Ballybrit when he rode Amourallis to victory in the McNamara Builders Premier Handicap for Ger Lyons on the final day of the festival. Understandably he has fond memories of the win.
“Amourallis was a spare ride for me because she’d finished second in the McDonagh handicap on the Tuesday and was a couple of pounds out of the handicap for the Sunday race. Padraig Beggy, who’d ridden her on the Tuesday, was riding another one for Ger Lyons on the Sunday.
“Like myself, Padraig was apprenticed at Prendergast’s and Ger rang up asking if there was anyone there that could do bottom weight and claim off it and the boss recommended me. Padraig’s horse – Timmy John was his name – was well-fancied but Ger Lyons told me the filly could be slow out of the gates but I was not to panic. I was last going down into the dip, but I got a few breaks and by the turn for home I was fourth or fifth. As soon as she got up the hill she took off and I beat one of Thomond O’Mara’s, Senator’s Alibi. I was completely gobsmacked and to be honest at the time I never realised how big the race was because all I wanted to do back then was ride racehorses. I just wanted to ride, to try and improve and maybe ride a winner or two.”
It is indicative of Hayes’ nascent professionalism that his preparation had included quizzing Padraig Beggy about the horse, studying the form book to see where the main dangers lay and also from whom he might get a lead during the race.
“I had travelled down with Christopher Geoghegan, Padraig and the late Damian Murphy who sadly died in Australia last year. We got a puncture on the way and we ended up rushing to the races and I was panicking thinking we wouldn’t make it. It was funny the way things worked out, but I never had any time to worry about the race and it all worked out brilliantly.”
Hayes had laid down a marker and slowly people began to take note. The following season – 2005 – he was the runaway winner of the apprentices’ title with 38 winners at a time when he thought riding 15 would have been a great season. The tally included victories for the likes of Tom Cooper, Frances Crowley, Liam McAteer and John Gleeson, as well as a well-backed win for Bryan Ellison at Beverly in the UK, aside altogether from his Prendergast winners.
Dave Keena became his agent at this point and in 2006 he retained his apprentices’ title with a further 33 winners and his talent was by then a valuable currency, so much so that in 2007 he was signed on as the retained jockey for Lady Chryss O’Reilly’s talented string, which came as something of a surprise to racing insiders, especially considering that Declan McDonogh was the stable jockey at the Prendergast yard which housed many of the O’Reilly string.
“In this game you’re always wondering when the bubble is going to burst, but it never has and to be made the retained jockey for Lady O’Reilly was just incredible. The O’Reillys had some really nice horses including several classic contenders and I was both shocked and delighted when I was asked to take the job on. I think it is down to four people – the boss, Dave Keena, Lady O’Reilly and her racing manager James Kelly – that I am where I am today. They have given me an opportunity that I couldn’t turn down.”
It may have been that Hayes got the job due to fears that McDonogh – the 2006 Champion jockey – would get the call-up for a possible vacancy as stable jockey at Ballydoyle at that time, but that is irrelevant now as the young Limerick man proved his mettle in no uncertain terms with his ride on Lady O’Reilly’s 66/1 shot Dimenticata in the Irish 1000 Guineas – a race he will never forget.
“She was the only filly from the yard left in the race and while her form didn’t suggest she would be a contender, I had asked the boss to leave her in the race because I’d only just been beaten a head on her in a Listed race at Gowran a few weeks before the Guineas and I thought there was more to come. Kevin peaked her really well for the Curragh – she was 110% - and at the time I’d never ridden anything at home that was going as well. She was only beaten a neck on the day by Finsceal Beo and she repaid our faith in her. I was delighted and disappointed in equal measure, but for a nineteen year old in your first classic, it was unbelievable.”
Hayes has ridden seven winners since July 13 – including a double on Derby day at the Curragh – and cannot wait to add to that tally this week at Galway. While it is a meeting that has been good to him, he takes nothing for granted and always demands the best of himself.
“If I had six winners on a seven-race card and got beaten in the other race because I rode the horse badly, that would break my heart. I’d be sick and I’d rather get the DVD of the one I lost and analyse it rather than celebrate the six I won. I am my own worst critic.”
His motivation, he maintains, is solely to do his best and his inspiration is the hard work put in by all those around him. “The O’Reillys are fantastic people and Lady O’Reilly is a great owner. The same is true of the boss – he’s 76 and still as enthusiastic as ever – and all the people in the yard. I just want to go and do my best for them. If you’re not giving 110%, then you’re letting them down.”
Baby-faced he may be, but Chris Hayes is imbued with the sort of steely character that makes champions. And make no mistake, he is a champion in the making.
