SHE arrives at Circle K just outside Cashel a little after 3pm, having been riding out since the crack of dawn in Limerick. There is still some obvious colouring under her right eye as a result of a kick from a flailing hoof four weeks previously. Matter-of-factly, she tells me there is a hairline fracture and though the soreness hasn’t receded, it will.

She likes order and schedule and has a full week of paid work, including weekly trips to the yards of Willie Mullins and Gordon Elliott. The demand for her talents exists off the track but right now, Katie O’Farrell is struggling to be active on it.

February has yielded just three rides so while she is earning a living, it is a little like training all year for a football team and getting very little game time.

Around 12 months ago, the 28-year-old had resolved to finish up if nothing happened by the end of the season. Now, despite spending far too many afternoons watching races than she would like, calling time isn’t even flickering in the periphery of her mind.

Enough happened between from April and August to bolster her wavering belief. Now, when doubt and frustration sets in, she fact to turn to, and if needs be, a photo of winning at Galway, with two of the all-time greats, Davy Russell and Ruby Walsh back in second and third.

So if you’re looking to organise a pity party, think again. There is no time for that here.

****

Katie O’Farrell has been doing the media rounds due to her excellence in Jump Girls, the two-part documentary that ended on TG4 on Thursday night. She is a little uncomfortable about that, given that she isn’t making any headlines for her exploits in the saddle.

All she wanted was to be portrayed authentically and the Katie O’Farrell we see on television is who she is. Honest, determined, enthusiastic, vulnerable sometimes, but mostly resolute.

A double at Fairyhouse in April, including a Grade A handicap hurdle on Low Sun for Mullins, resuscitated her ailing confidence. By the time she rode the same horse to victory in another major handicap hurdle at Galway early in August, she had five winners for the nascent campaign and ridden in the Galway Plate and Galway Hurdle, a race her father, Seamus won as a trainer with the homebred Perugino Diamond in 2000.

Remarkably, but unfortunately, she booted Low Sun home with a broken leg. After five more days of ignoring the signals, the fractured left fibula was diagnosed the following week.

It was hard to take having finally gotten moving after shoulder and ankle problems. To make matters worse, the expected six-week lay-off became 16.

She wouldn’t be human if the struggle that provides a dose of racing reality to Jump Girls didn’t get to her the odd time. But the resolve endures.

She continues to clock up the miles, ride the horses, eschew life’s luxuries, hit the gym and work on the mind, grafting harder than ever.

She would love to pick up a ride at Cheltenham, where her brother Conor has ridden a festival winner, though the bizarre age restriction surrounding the Martin Pipe Conditional Jockeys’ race denies her what should be her best opportunity, given the numbers Elliott and Mullins tend to throw at it.

Fairyhouse and Punchestown provided opportunities last year and she will be ready if the same applies this time around.

RESILIENCE

There is something in the O’Farrell genes that smacks of bloody-minded resilience. Seamus lost the sight in an eye in a riding accident when he was 10 but he was back in the saddle at the very first opportunity. Played hurling too.

James, one of Seamus’ six children with Cathy, was a talented jockey who won the American Grand National in 2010 before having to retire due to an horrific catalogue of injuries that included a broken neck and broken back. They are bred hardy.

“It’s funny, a part of you is half-thinking, ‘Jesus I got a fair kicking, I feel pretty rough but my limbs aren’t hanging off so I better keep going’” says a smiling O’Farrell of the kick in the head.

“It’s strange. The next day I had a ride for Gordon Elliott and Gigginstown. I was thinking, ‘I have worked all season long to get rides like this. There is no way I am sitting at home. Unless I die during the night or something!’

“There was no man going to stop me swinging my leg over Low Sun on [that] Saturday [in Galway], no matter how sore I was. There is just too much time and work and energy gone into getting wherever it is that you are at. You are not going to go, ‘God I am not feeling great today, I might just sit it out.’”

Yet there is a fear that people think she is always injured. Ironically, because she isn’t busy at the moment, she is getting lots of well-meaning queries about the state of her leg from those that think she must still be sidelined. Jump Girls has contributed to that because of when it was shot. We are seeing it now, but it isn’t now. She is fit a long while, rode a winner for Mullins [Small Farm] at Limerick over Christmas, touching off Paul Townend on the stable favourite in a driving finish in the process. But there are few pursuits that offer even the most successful, such wildly varying experiences.

CHAMPION

“I was in a position where I was hugely thinking of being champion conditional, and why shouldn’t I think that no more than anyone else? That was my aim and my first ride of the new season was a winner [Shantelle at Ballinrobe for Dick Donohoe].

“The likes of a big win at Galway is worth 10 small wins, which is crazy when you think about it. There were so many things coming to pass. To ride in the Galway Hurdle, my dad won that when I was much younger. Same with the Galway Plate. I was thrilled. I rode for Willie in both of them. I had a Galway festival winner; that was on my list as well. I managed to do all three of those in a week.

“You have to believe that it can happen even if it is not happening. Keep believing anyway … I have to move the bar now again. It seems to be the story of my life, it is moving that bar to achieve the things I am working towards.”

It’s just the reality of life for the majority of jockeys.

“You could have four, six hard months and you go to Fairyhouse and have a double; in a half-an-hour the world changes. Everything just changed. It was disbelief because I was in a place where I was so down and out. I really felt like it just might never happen. I know there are lots of jockeys out there that are so capable and have so much ability but just don’t make it. I was fighting that realisation that maybe I will be one of them but I don’t want to be one of them. I want to make it.

“I persevered to the point where I was just going through the motions because I didn’t want to do anything else. I wasn’t making it but I didn’t want to do anything else. And in the space of half-an-hour that day, all that chunk of time that was just miserable and really difficult it made it all worthwhile.

“This time around, I know I can tell myself I have done this before and from a worse place; that I can come back from it and get to higher than I was again. You have to believe that. It is a mental thing but it keeps me going some days.”

The mental aspect of it is huge. She is very forthright in the role working with Ciara Losty, the renowned sports psychologist made available to all riders through the Jockey Pathway, has played in her life. They have now become firm friends.

“You are a professional and you have to act that way. It is not a personal thing. That is one of the big things I learned from Ciara. If a trainer is not happy, or an owner is not happy with the ride you give a horse, if you are not put up on something, or you are dropped off something, it is not personal. It is not an attack on your personality or integrity, it is just business.

“I have this big box of tools that Ciara taught me. I remember when I first went to her, I thought, ‘How is this one going to help me now, sitting down talking about what like?’ But the amount of things I have learned, the amount of tools that I have stored away. Sometimes you forget them. She will write down things. I will write down things that she will tell me. Some of them will come to me straight away. And other days you are so frustrated in a fog, that you are thinking, ‘I need to remember something, a tool that I have there to deal with this!’ You will always think of something to help reset yourself a little bit and bring yourself back down to earth.

“Everything turned around for the better once I started seeing her. She would help me manage my mind which was destructive at the time. I would swear by her. I am at a stage where I have developed a lot thanks to her.”

Losty has been important on the psychology of sports performance too, but more than anything, you need rides to stay sharp and improve. Until they arrive, you must have yourself in the best shape possible. O’Farrell looks for that extra per cent everywhere. Her belief can be tested at times but now that she has the testimony of last spring and summer, it has a significant foundation.

“At the end of the day no one is forcing me to do this … it’s what I choose to do and I think that’s why it gets very frustrating for me at times. I just want to do it so much better.

“I feel like I have so much better to offer, but not getting the chance to do it. The longer that goes on the further I feel it is getting away from me. It kind of bothers me.

“[But] I have the evidence that it is there. Having that evidence is huge. There are days when literally that is all that keeps me going. I have done it before and I am going to do it again. I am doing this again. It is not about proving anything to anybody else. It’s a personal thing. One of my biggest fears is not reaching my potential. I feel that there is so much more in me. But I can’t give it without the support of other people.

“I am trying to be reckoned with up there and picked from the top of the pile as opposed to being, ‘Ah sure poor girl. She has had a tough time.’ That’s no good to me. I need rides, I need winners, I need your support.”

As Denis O’Regan told her recently, she is faring a lot better than she thinks. While this month has been cold and she missed the guts of four months, she has already ridden in more races this season than ever before. Her tally of six winners is her joint best. She has been a little unlucky, but every jockey gets hurt.

“A lot of what I have been through or endured in the last couple of years has been out of my control.

“So you can torment yourself you like but that is not going to help. I know I seem like one that has it all under control, but I am working on it. It’s just not helpful if you are going to be tormenting yourself over it. For me that is the single most difficult thing in racing, the amount of uncontrollables that there are.

“You control the controllables. I do that and I do my work, do my gym, keep my weight right, do the things that I can control. I want people talking about me because I made history, because I was champion conditional, or I rode a winner at Cheltenham. I want people talking about me because of that. I am hoping we will get to that. I am hoping that is coming.”

FEMALE JOCKEYS

“There are lots of people who are probably willing to give rides to girls but are less tolerant when it comes to things not going right. They will get a different jockey the next day. If something goes wrong, it was the girl’s fault.

“Rachael, you just can’t deny her. She is so consistently producing results that you can’t deny anything that she is doing. She just doesn’t allow that door to even open on the whole female thing at all. She is doing more than what most lads can do. She nearly can’t be counted.

“It wasn’t a thing for me, because growing up riding ponies and hunting, you are in among all of them. You are all in against each other. I was beating lads every weekend out eventing and there were far more girls competing than there are riding in races. It was never a thing for me.

“Make no mistake, I think Rachael is just an exceptional case, and an exceptional sportswoman. She is in her own bracket. But you take Lisa O’Neill, who has done amazing things. She didn’t just fall off the earth yesterday. She has been grafting and grinding for years before her big time came around. Nearly every week she has a winner now, has had a Cheltenham winner and she shows what she can do. People think she is an overnight success and she is riding all of these winners out of nowhere. Eh, no!

“Over time you gain respect [from the other jockeys] if you ride well and you are not a pure cowboy. There was one question I was asked during an interview during the week, ‘Do you think the lads in the weigh room see you as just another jockey and not just a girl?’ I said ‘Yeah, definitely.’ You never get that from the lads. Not that you would be looking for it.”