AS a Tramore native with family members involved in the racing and breeding industry, I was lucky enough to get plenty of exposure to the sport at a young age. Some of my earliest racing memories are attending the unique little seaside track, particular for its marquee fixtures of the four-day August Festival and the New Year’s Day card, which is a fixture that I make sure to attend every year.

Aside from growing up in a house which literally overlooked the back straight of Tramore Racecourse, it was my family’s involvement with horses that gave me plenty of memorable days as a child.

My grandad, George Kent, always had a deep passion for horses and was able to race some on the flat in his own colours, including a filly named Tropical Lady, who he had in training with Jim Bolger.

She gave me some very memorable childhood days out with my family at the Curragh, including when winning a handicap on Irish Derby Day in 2004 and when winning the Group 2 Royal Whip Stakes a year later.

Passion for horse racing

In total, Tropical Lady won eight of her 25 starts in my grandad’s colours and finished fourth in the Group 1 Pretty Polly Stakes and, while I was certainly too young to appreciate those achievements at the time, especially for someone like my grandad, who was a small owner in the sport, those days out with my family definitely instilled a passion for horse racing that has very much stuck with me to this day.

My grandad kept Tropical Lady to breed from at home at Knockanduff Stud, just outside Tramore, which my uncle, George Kent Jnr, currently operates alongside his dairy farming business.

Despite the family involvement in racing, I never took up riding myself and it was only when I was completing my Masters in European History at Maynooth in 2023 that I began to think seriously about developing my own career in the industry, when I saw an advertisement on social media for the Racing Media Academy.

It had been set up by Josh Apiafi to get young people into the racing media industry with a fully-funded residential course at the British Racing School in Newmarket, followed by a work placement within a leading media organisation.

I sent off an application and, after completing my Masters towards the end of the year, was lucky enough to get a place in the Class of 2024, an opportunity which I jumped at as it looked like an excellent way for me to combine my passion for writing and research with my passion for horse racing.

I then got to spend a week at the British Racing School in April 2024, during which I got the chance to start building up a network within the industry, getting to know a great bunch of fellow cadets and passionate racing fans and learning from a number of industry leading professionals who came in throughout the week to give us talks and complete workshops and tasks with us, including the likes of Nick Luck, Lydia Hislop and Lee Mottershead to name just a few.

At the end of the week, we then had to put our skills to the test by putting on a mock race day, where we had to plan and deliver a 45-minute live broadcast with the help of Race Tech, which was nerve-wracking, but which we managed to pull off and gave us a fantastic insight into how much planning and work goes into broadcasting a race day.

Podcast

The placement that I got from the RMA gave me the excellent opportunity to work with the Nick Luck Daily Podcast. I was able to attend York’s Ebor Festival with Nick and see how he puts the podcast together each morning, as well as shadow him while he was on the live broadcast for Racing TV.

I also got the chance to report from the Goffs Premier Yearling Sale and contribute some interview segments to two episodes of the podcast. I couldn’t recommend the Racing Media Academy enough to anyone who has a passion for horse racing and is looking to get their foot in the door to start developing a career in the industry.

Shortly after my time on the RMA, I interviewed for a role as deputy editor with European Bloodstock News, who were kind enough to take a chance on someone who had not previously been employed in the industry and someone with little journalistic experience at the time.

New role

I moved over to Newmarket at the start of July 2024 to take up that role with EBN and have been thoroughly enjoying working as part of an incredibly talented and friendly editorial team ever since.

EBN is a daily publication, which is emailed to subscribers every evening and provides readers with daily racing, breeding and sales news. It is also printed and distributed as a full-colour publication at the major European sales, and we pride ourselves on being a uniquely informative resource for anyone who is professionally involved in the bloodstock industry, or for anyone with a passion for breeding and racing.

My work in the role of deputy editor is focused on daily production of the issue, which includes sub-editing, writing pedigree analysis, news gathering, writing feature stories and writing sales reports among other things.

Aside from greatly developing my knowledge of the industry and getting to work with a great group of people, the role has given me the chance to experience plenty of amazing things, such as going on the French stallion trail earlier this year to report on behalf of EBN. Outside of my role with EBN, I attend the races as often as I can with a group of friends who predominantly don’t work in the industry, but who follow the sport and love attending the races.

Around the country

It has become an annual event for us to attend Leopardstown’s Christmas Festival every year on Savills Chase Day, and I’ve dragged them around the country to plenty of the major Irish Festivals, as well as finally ticking off the Cheltenham Festival last month.

I’ve always been a National Hunt man at heart, and I’d love to get involved in ownership in the future. It was always something I kind of half joked about with friends and family, but now that I’m working in the industry, it has definitely become a more serious goal.

No doubt that I’ll be roping my girlfriend into this, and I have plenty of friends and family members that I’ll more than likely be reaching out to in the future with the idea of getting a syndicate going. Even just to have a winner at Tramore would give me hell of a kick, or how about a Cheltenham Festival winner? We can all keep dreaming!

Killian was in conversation with

John O’Riordan.