IT is gone five o’clock on a Thursday evening, cold and dark. The rain is hammering down and it is the kind of evening in which you might expect to see the Four Horsemen cavorting around.

There is but one and he is riding work.

To say Don Atkinson is unaware of the apocalyptic conditions would be pushing it but he is focused, wrapped up in what he is doing on board Ringrone Castle, who he has ridden to success twice already this season. That’s half his record seasonal high.

You don’t get involved with horses because you have to and you certainly don’t still participate as a point-to-point jockey at 52 years of age to pay the bills. This is about a fervent desire to ride horses over fences at pace.

It has never been about the glory. Sure, Atkinson had dreams like everybody else but the realisation that they would remain just that did not leave the passion dulled or diluted.

The phone rings. It’s an interview request.

“No bother at all.”

It is a phrase that seems to summarise possibly the longest overnight success the world has ever seen. The point-to-point world anyway.

SPOTLIGHT

Atkinson has taken the sudden explosion of interest in his fifth decade as a licensed jockey completely in his stride. He is extremely comfortable in the spotlight, fully aware that there is only the 15 minutes in it, and intent on enjoying it for what it is while it lasts.

A milestone for Don Atkinson pictured after riding Ringrone Castle in the open at Castletown Geoghegan in Octobr 2017 - it marked his 40th season riding.

There is none of the awkwardness that would often accompany a newcomer to this type of increase in profile, but then he’s not a teenager.

Fortunately too, his experience hasn’t made him wary. He eschews caution and the result is a one-man stand-up routine, with more one-liners than a Michael McIntyre show. No wonder he was named Anglesey Lodge Personality of the Year at last season’s point-to-point awards.

The story here is not in the numbers. The most winners Atkinson ever rode in a season were four, in the 2010-11 campaign. This is about longevity and endurance, in a game that beats you and breaks you up like no other. Keeping going and winning titles or making money is one thing. Persevering at the other end of the scale speaks entirely of a way of life.

RECOGNISED

The recent nomination for a HRI Award was greeted with disarming joy. It meant the world to be recognised for his time at the coalface since riding in his first point in 1978.

Don and Judy Atkinson (right) at the HRI Awards where he was nominated in the Point-to-point category in 2015

It is easy to invoke Hans Christian Andersen or Pixar but it truly defies the norm to be earning plaudits 37 years after that debut, especially when there haven’t been too many in the interim.

He has thought about retiring once or twice, even tried to prepare himself in the off-season, but found his body literally repelling the idea, the unusual inactivity combining with the wear and tear of all the falls inducing Tin Man-esque rigidity.

So he got back in the saddle and to the gym, where he runs and pounds the cross-trainer three or four times a week. He may be the oldest out there but he’s one of the fittest too.

“I could have done with this 20 years ago,” he cracks, talking about the sudden increase in profile, revelling in the incongruity of it all.

“’Tis great. After all the years it’s grand to get some recognition.”

He didn’t see it coming.

“Not at all. I was happy enough to be staying on. (Finbarr) Tierney kept me going so I said I’d keep on. I get the spins off him and I’ve enough to be riding out. He stuck with me all through the years. I have two or three of my own as well and it’s grand. No pressure.”

There was a time when it might have been a little different.

“When I started off in the horse and pony racing I was flying it. I was booked to go into Arthur Stephenson’s but the mother and father wouldn’t leave me because they wanted me to get the trade so that put a stop to it. Once I got the trade then and the money started coming in, I kept going.”

"I stopped riding out during the summer. Jesus Christ I could barely get out of bed. I seized up.

He runs a panel-beating shop and says that the only reason he stays at it through the worst of the recession was that being self-employed enables him to duck out as required to tend to the horses.

“I used to be riding for Robert Hawkins and a few of us would be schooling them but ’twas Enda Bolger then who’d come down and ride them on the day. We’d get the spin if Enda couldn’t ride them.

“I remember below in Dungarvan, Enda couldn’t ride a horse for Hawkins, Shannon House (having been committed to something else). The two of us were challenging going to the last and I fell at the last.

“Above in Bandon then one day, I had the pick of the two horses and Enda was on the other. The two of us were battling again and he beat me by a length. The following fortnight, I was jocked off - I don’t know was it P.J. Finn or one of those big fellas was put up - but that was the way it went.”

He swears that contemplating the possibilities had he gone to England, if he’d have managed to get the Bolger rides on those key occasions, doesn’t eat at him. He was doing what he wanted, from the time Hawkins proved an accomplice in the young hopeful’s truancy.

“I lived for it. I used to go in on the school bus, get off the bus outside of the school and Robert Hawkins used to be parked outside the school with the lorry.

Don on his way to victory on Ringrone Castle

“I would get on the lorry and go working for the day and he would drop me back outside the school just before they came back out. It was the same when I was doing the apprenticeship. I used to be missing more days.”

It was his uncle, Pat Lordan who introduced him to racing initially. Lordan - father of successful flat jockey Wayne - was a top point-to-point pilot and he taught his nephew many of the skills of riding, before pointing him in the direction of pony racing and a subsequent link-up with the man he calls The Hawk.

“It’s all around here. My next door neighbour is Aidan Coleman. There was Aidan and Kevin next door, there was Wayne next door to that and the uncle, and then myself. We used all get together at weekends with the point-to-pointers, to an old track down by an old closed down railway where there were a few jumps built. We used have right good old craic down there.”

The game has changed in many ways since those early days. The plastic fences are mercifully no more, nor the inflexible planks. Horses are better schooled because people have more access to the necessary facilities. And the hunts are much more professional in their organisation, which has come on in “leaps and bounds”.

“It’s like a track meeting now, without the track.”

There is significantly more money about too but he isn’t seeing any of it. Nor does he expect to. He’s a jockey on the northern side of 50. Delighted for the spin.

That enthusiasm sustained him over the many, lengthy droughts. He does recall threatening to retire if Daniel O’Connell’s mare, Ardfert Fountain couldn’t win in Clonmel one day. She skated up. Yet he went nine years before landing his next victory.

“I’m doing more now than I did back along. I’m training them and doing the lot myself so I’m getting even more of a buzz out of it. If I was at it hard over the years though, I’d be well broke up and gone from the scene by now. It’s funny how it works out.

“I was tempted to pull the plug once or twice. When the point-to-point season stopped, I stopped riding out during the summer. Jesus Christ I could barely get out of bed. I seized up. I went straight back to the gym and started riding out again and I’m f**king flying since. I’m not gonna stop until I have to. With all the falls, the back especially was seizing up so I’d have to keep it going.”

He has competed against all the great point-to-point riders, from Enda Bolger to John Thomas McNamara and Davy Russell, through to the current magnificent crop headed by Derek O’Connor, Jamie Codd and Barry O’Neill. There was one who stood out though.

HARD MAN

“Nicky Dee was my favourite. I used to get on well with him. Nicky used to call me Andy Turnell ’cos I would ride so short. He was a hard man but he was very good to me. I was only a young fella starting off and Nicky was sound out. Other lads would be roaring at you and fighting with you but Nicky was sound.

“I used to love watching him ride. He was very good on a horse. They used to call him The Housewives’ Favourite.”

Speaking of wives, Atkinson’s is of the patient variety. He married Judy last April.

“The first one didn’t take to it,” he jokes irreverently of a first marriage that didn’t last. “She went out through the wing!”

He has a 25-year-old son from that first marriage, and two girls with Judy. With him gone at 6.30am and not returning until after 8pm, Judy’s forbearance is vital. The girls will keep him young, I venture.

“I’m gonna stay riding as long as I can because I’ll only wear out the whip on the young fellas coming to the door!” comes the response.

The Atkinsons spent Sunday night in Dublin before the HRI Awards at Leopardstown last Monday, although Don met with Judy up there, having had a couple of rides. It meant a lot to be nominated for the point-to-point award, won by Bolger.

PRIVILEGE

“Just to be on the same table as the boys is a big bonus for me. They’re all champions. I’m the only one that was never a champion. That’s a great privilege.”

He plumps for Ardfern Minstrel as the best horse he ever rode, having beaten the legendary Risk Of Thunder once. Jonjo O’Neill considered buying the gelding, owned by Atkinson himself, but decided against it.

On another occasion, Atkinson took him to Doncaster but while the son of Black Minstrel was easy to handle generally, he went mad in the ring. That frightened off any interested parties. In the end, he was moved on but the bad luck continued and Ardfern Minstrel broke down.

Now he has Ringrone Castle for Áine Tierney, and the Michael Kennedy-trained six-year-old could be the one to give him the elusive first winner on the track.

“I’ve ridden a lot inside the rails. I had my own mare (Found It). I thought she’d win a hurdle race but I couldn’t get her to settle.

“I worked Ringrone Castle last night in the dark and I’m just hoping he could win a maiden hunter chase. He’s a nice horse. He’s bags of ability and is a good leaper.”

There is no fear of the newfound fame going to his head, though he is knocking as much fun out of it as possible.

“’Tis crazy at the moment. I’m gonna need an event manager or something. I’ll be opening shops soon!”

It seems unlikely that he will make a sixth decade of race-riding, or a fifth of booting home winners having registered his first on Blind Ambition at Kilworth in 1983. Yet a deadline has not been imposed and with no pressure coming from home to pull the plug, the day of reckoning will be determined, if not by injury, then by his mind.

“I always said the day I go down and I shit myself down at the start is the day I’ll pull the plug on it. The day I get panicky about it, I’ll get myself killed. The day I get panicky about it, I’m out the gap.”

No sign yet.