Moore traverses the world in pursuit of winners

Jockey Ryan Moore celebrates with the trophy after winning the Dubai Duty Free Irish Derby on Auguste Rodin during the Dubai Duty Free Irish Derby Festival at Curragh Racecourse PIC: Sportsfile

Italy is the furthest I’ve ever been on a plane. The trip came the day after I’d signed the contract back in the late 1960s.

It was my first time ever to take to the air, and it wasn’t pleasant. Petrified, I was, from the minute we took off from Dublin until landing at Paris Orly for a re-fuel or something. (That’s a claim I can make: I was in France.) It was the same from there on to Rimini.

Meals were available, of course, but all I tucked into for the near five-hour journey was an After Eight mint. It wasn’t a good experience for me, and I’m sure it was the same for my travelling companion, The Chancellor, she having to look at me staring ahead and holding the arm rests in the way that I did when I went up to the top tier of the newly-constructed Cusack Stand.

I’m sure readers will be delighted to hear that I’ve since worked up the courage to make a few trips by air, mostly for race meetings in England.

And as I take my place in the hack-reserved crow’s nest in Croker, I look across to where I spent my day of terror over 20 years ago, not enjoying the game, peering down at it being played on a field that looked the size of a snooker table.

So, how would I do if I’d been faced with the schedule Ryan Moore had at the weekend, taking an air trip that could be measured in days, not hours?

Simple, I wouldn’t, or closer to it, couldn’t.

Top jockey at Aidan O’Brien’s stable, Moore flew out to Australia last week to ride a fancied one for a local stable in a valuable contest.

The race went ahead on Saturday morning, our time, and didn’t result in a win for Moore.

It could only have been a matter of minutes after he’d dismounted that Moore was back on a plane, scheduled for Dublin.

He needed to, because he was due to get legged up on a few O’Brien runners at The Curragh on Sunday afternoon. He made it, riding a winner.

They say this trip can take around 24 hours, and, also, that at the end of it there can be serious disorientation, not to mention jet-lag. But not for Moore.

Being a jockey weighing around nine stone, he probably didn’t go beyond a few After Eights for sustenance, choosing sleeps over eats.

Moore’s been to Dundalk Stadium a number of occasions and has ridden plenty of winners there.

In his absence from the first of the winner season meetings last Friday night, the mount on O’Brien’s only runner was taken by another top jockey, Colin Keane. Alabama, touted as a star for the future but so far failing to fulfil expectations, at last opened his account at odds-on.

Winner of the closing race was Dark Street, owned and trained by Luke Comer, whose swingeing ban for doping was mentioned on these pages last week.

The five-year-old got up in a blanket finish at odds of 7/1.

Comer, who is appealing the Horseracing Regularity Board’s findings, can continue to send out runners until January 1st.

Something else from Friday’s card: The late Queen Elizabeth was down as breeder of a runner in the 5th race. General Idea, trained in Co Meath by Ian Patrick Donaghue, could get no closer than 7th.

Racing continues at the track each Friday night until just before Christmas, when there’ll be a three-week break. And there’ll also be meetings each Wednesday afternoon in November.

TG4, who gave last week’s Listowel Festival blanket coverage, will be at Dowdallshill for one of those November meetings.