SOMETIMES it doesn’t pay to be alone with your own thoughts.David Casey has faced all sorts of daunting prospects in the 24 years since telling his career guidance teacher, as a joke, and that he wanted to become a jockey, then going through with it because he feared he might get into trouble and his best friend bet him he wouldn’t.

He has ridden 16 Grade 1 winners, experienced the rush of Cheltenham glory twice, bagged two French Champion Hurdles and a brace of Hennessy Gold Cups, was the first claimer to be victorious in the Galway Hurdle and is in illustrious company having added the Plate to his lengthy roll of honour in later years.

Hell, he has defied medical advice telling him he should give up riding due to the gravity of his broken neck. That was more than 10 years ago.

Now though, in Listowel, he is in an unusually quiet weigh room. Normally, the place is a hive of activity, full of slagging, jokes and gossip, but this is a four-runner contest, the last of the day for the professionals. It’s dead to the world.

Not good. His last ride ever and the nerves are kicking in like the 39-year-old Waterford man can’t remember for a long, long time.

“It was because it was the last one and the build-up. Ruby (Walsh) had got off it and Willie (Mullins) and Rich Ricci let me ride it to send me out on a winner.

“As I said to Ruby, if I’d three rides the day after and I was riding a 1/6 shot it wouldn’t have bothered me. I would have thought he was a certainty anyway because I’d been riding him in work, so I knew he was more than good enough to win.

“There was only four runners in the race so I was sitting in the weigh room on my own before it, just waiting. And you start thinking to yourself.

“‘If I get beat the place is gonna go mental!’

“I knew he was good enough to win. I knew he would win. But I was just thinking ‘Jaysus David whatever you do, don’t fucking fall off him.’ Or the lead or the girth would break, or he’d slip up or something stupid. It was that more than anything. It would’ve been some let down for everybody!

“If I’d four rides the day after I’d have been as confident as hell. It was just the fact it was gonna be the last and people had done so much to make it that way.

“When I got into the parade ring and up on the horse I was perfect. It was grand then. It was just because there were only four runners and I was sitting on my own for five minutes. Usually you’d be chatting away to someone.”

GUARD OF HONOUR

In the end, it was a procession, with Long Dog confirming his odds and sending Casey out in perfect fashion. His colleagues formed a guard of honour to greet Casey on the way back and the public offered a rousing reception. It was genuinely moving.

“It was brilliant the way it ended. Obviously I wasn’t expecting the reception I got from the lads and everybody at the races. I was very thankful for it and it was very generous of them. It definitely went better than I expected.”

The Waterford City native expects Long Dog to be a key element of the Mullins-Ricci A-team in the coming years.

“I think he’s a very good horse. He won with any amount in hand. Every question we ask he answers, and every time he does I think there’s a bit more again. He’s gonna face tougher tests but I think he has potential to be pretty good. Of all the novices we’ve seen so far in the summer, he’s probably the best of them.

“He was a very good horse for Andy Oliver. I know he only ran once on the flat but it was a very good performance to win the way he did and he beat a good horse in Thomas Edison as well. So the potential was always there and I think he’s improving the whole time.”

Casey has been thinking about the future for a few years now. Not that he was actually contemplating retirement back then but he was pragmatic enough to know once he approached his mid-thirties that he wasn’t going to be a jump jockey too much longer.

“The offer from Willie is there five years, when we talked about it first. We brought up the subject again a couple of months ago, me chatting to Willie and Jackie. I needed to go away, look and see if it was something I wanted to do and the time was right. And it was.

“A few weeks ago we had another chat and I was happy with that. But I told them that I wanted to keep riding until Listowel. I’d never won the Kerry National, been second five or six times. I thought I’d be riding Pass The Hat, who was second last year and had a very good chance until the ground changed. I thought I’d have one more go and it would be nice to go out in a big race. I have a lot of friends around Listowel too.”

With Pass The Hat missing out, Mullins legged him aboard Alelchi Inois but the partnership was never a factor and Casey pulled up.

It ended well though thanks to Long Dog and now, Casey is in Australia, having departed this week to oversee Max Dynamite’s Melbourne Cup preparations.

NEW JOB

Assisting Mullins, his son Patrick and the rest of the Closutton team is the new job spec now but it has always been a collaborative process at jump racing’s most dominant establishment and Casey has been a valued member of the brains trust for many years.

“I’ve been there 20 years so I know the run of the place. I know how Willie thinks. If something happens I’d know Willie would want it done this way or that way before anyone says anything. He might send me away to ride a horse if he was thinking of buying it, just to see what I think of it.”

The transition should be seamless then, although the Flemington mission means he isn’t being eased in. It reflects the value placed on his skills but Casey was sure to have a lengthy chat with Emmet Mullins, who travelled with Simenon in 2013 and is now a fully-fledged trainer.

“You’d be surprised about the small details rather than the bigger ones that tend to take care of themselves. In quarantine, the clothes you wear in the yard have to stay there. So you bring a spare set of clothes with you. If I walk into the yard with a pair of jeans and a t-shirt on me, I have to walk back out in me nip if I don’t have a spare set! Different stuff like that.”

It isn’t what a city boy was dreaming of growing up, surrounded by hurling and soccer. He rode ponies a few times as a seven- or eight-year-old but there was no Pauline equine devotion.

In time, the Caseys moved a little over the border to Wexford. David became friendly with John Codd, whose father was a trainer. They watched the races in the betting shop after school, but still nothing stirred.

Then their career guidance teacher asked the intermediate certificate class what they wanted to do so he could advise them as to the most suitable subjects to take for their leaving.

“Literally taking the mickey” the two boys decided to throw a curve ball and select jockey.

They didn’t account for the perseverance of their teacher though and a two-week course in RACE was sourced. That called his mate’s bluff but Casey feared getting into strife for wasting his tutor’s time.

When Codd bet him £50 he wouldn’t go through with it, the die was well and truly cast. An offer on the 10-month course followed the initial trip to Kildare. He loved it.

INFLUENCE

“They sent me to Tony Redmond, and he was a huge influence on my career. It was a huge help that he was a fellow Waterford man. He took great interest in me and has done throughout my career. That was the start, and the rest is history.”

After his mentor’s retirement, he spent six months with Michael Hourigan. When a vacancy presented itself at Closutton, he was told there was an opportunity if he worked hard.

More than 20 years later, he remains. No-one is better placed to offer a judgement on the marvel that is his boss, given that Casey has had a first-class seat as Air Mullins has rocketed to the moon from humble origins.

“The man is a genius basically. The fundamentals of the way he is training hasn’t really changed. He’s a great man to take on detail and to learn as he goes along. Willie goes racing in France and different places and speaks to different trainers. I always find he takes in little nuggets of information and uses them.

“But he’s got a brilliant eye, a hugely brilliant eye, and he sees things that I definitely don’t see and other people I imagine don’t see. He’s just bringing it to the table and it all works.”

Of all the wonderful days Casey enjoyed for Mullins and other trainers - and there were many clamouring to get him on - it is the Hennessy Gold Cup victory on board his old mucker Rule Supreme that, while not the most prestigious, might well have been the most important.

“I’d been out for four months after breaking my leg. I was only back two days. When you get back it can be a bit of a struggle trying to get going again. You’ve lost contacts, fellas have ridden winners on horses you should have been riding and it’s hard to take them off sometimes.

“So you’re looking for a boost. You’re looking for a big winner and it came so soon. I rode Strangely Brown the same day that won the Grade 3 three-year-old hurdle so it was a huge boost. I don’t know if I celebrated it as much as the Cheltenham winners but it was hugely important at the time.”

Talent and bottle, present and correct still. It needed to be. A few months later, just two weeks before he was due to ride Hedgehunter in the Aintree Grand National, Casey suffered an horrific neck injury. Watching Walsh guide Hedgehunter to victory over the famous fences was tough to take but his career was in jeopardy.

“When I broke my neck, I was out for six months but I started riding after three months without telling anybody because Rule Supreme was going back for the French Champion Hurdle for the second year and I wanted to be back for that. So I rode out for a few days before I went back to see the neck specialist. He actually told me he wanted me to retire. I didn’t tell him I’d been riding out a week! The ligaments holding the vertebrae in place hadn’t healed and the vertebrae was moving, so if I’d gotten a fall it could have been catastrophic. He had worked for the Dallas Cowboys and said if I played American Football, I’d never be allowed play again.

“I said ‘it’s just as well I’m a jockey so.’

“I wasn’t being flippant about it. I knew it was serious. He said to take at least another three months off and make sure the ligaments were healed to stabilise the vertebrae. So it was never really a problem.”

BROKEN BONES

“Always with jockeys, you want to get back sooner than what you should. As soon as the pain goes - and it’s gone a day or two after - even though you know you’re not physically capable probably because of broken bones or whatever, the fact you’re feeling good means you want to get back.”

All this is recounted in the matter-of-fact fashion one associates with jockeys. trap me up and get me back out there doc.

You do it because you have to but you must want it more than anything. Getting up to ride work every morning in Closutton provides pretty decent motivation. Just think of the machines Casey has seen come and go... it’s unfair to ask but we must.

The best?

“You’d say the best horse I’ve ridden at home for what he’s achieved would have to be Hurricane Fly. It would be very difficult for any horse to emulate him.”

“Potentially, at the moment - I’ve ridden Vautour a couple of times at home - from what I’ve seen him do on the racetrack, I think he could be the best of all time.”

“The stride on him. He kills horses I think with his stride. I don’t know would you ever get to the bottom of him. I think he could do it from two miles to four miles. I don’t think it would matter to him.”

Champion Hurdle or Gold Cup?

“I think he could go for either and it probably wouldn’t matter.”

He has caught a glimpse of another side of racing with his wife Áine linking up with with Gillian Walsh (Ruby’s better half), former HRI communications boss, Tamso Doyle-Cox and Aileen Lawlor as owners of Clondaw Warrior.

“The girls told Willie the plan a year and a half ago that they wanted to win the Ascot Stakes at Royal Ascot. It’s been brilliant, better than we ever expected. Seeing it from a different side, it was brilliant craic.”

That story isn’t finished yet. Neither, by a wide margin, is David Casey’s.