So only getting round to this now! Thank you all for your kind messages, super day. Still on cloud 9

Katie Walsh, Thursday, Twitter

IT has been a triumphant couple of weeks for Katie Walsh but hectic too. Monday’s Irish Grand National win was a landmark achievement in her career, the realisation of a lifetime’s dream but it had its place in the calendar. The world doesn’t stop.

Now 30, she has built up an impressive list of achievements in the saddle but that is only part of the story. Husband, Ross O’Sullivan, has his own yard close to Punchestown but she herself spends her days “at home” in Kill, working with her father, Ted.

It is also where she keeps her select stock as she makes a name for herself pinhooking breezers.

Walsh had six for this year but that figure is now five, after her Siyouni colt - bought for €28,000 in France as a yearling - topped the Brightwells Sale at Ascot when sold for £90,000 after recording the morning’s fastest breeze. Royal Ascot is his early target.

In a brief period, Walsh has established a reputation for her eye and ability to produce sharp two-year-olds that are ready to run.

Caspar Netscher is the top graduate so far, having been purchased for 25,000gns before being sold for 65,000gns. He went on to confirm his precocity by claiming two Group 2s as a juvenile and added a German 2000 Guineas and Greenham Stakes at three.

So that is what takes up most of her time now. After Ascot, there was the little matter of winning a Cork bumper for Ross on the highly promising Call It Magic last Sunday and then the National on Monday. On Thursday, she flew to Liverpool to continue her duties as Aintree Ladies’ Day ambassador, which have been ongoing in recent months.

There is no ride in the Grand National this year but she will be busy, while also keeping her fingers crossed for big brother Ruby and sister-in-law Nina Carberry. She fancies the latter to go very close on First Lieutenant.

From there she will travel to Newmarket for the Craven Sales on Wednesday, then it’s a whistle stop tour involving Doncaster, Punchestown and Saint-Cloud, with the odd pit-stop back home. It’s non-stop.

“It’s mental but I love it and to have a couple of winners in between and win an Irish National, it’s very easy to get out of bed in the morning. It’s great to be doing something you love.”

She has been a high achiever from the beginning, making it all look so easy booting home bumper winners for Willie Mullins, having initially caught the eye when winning a flat handicap for Ted at Gowran Park in October 2003 on Hannon.

A year later, she was on board for Paddy Mullins in a Tramore bumper and Willie took note.

By that stage, the Eadestown ladies football team knew they were losing her. A speedy attacker, she enjoyed football but not even Katie could find time for everything in the end.

She won a Ladies Derby in 2005 on Cloneden and went on to guide Alexander Taipan, Snowy Morning and Glencove Marina to their maiden racecourse successes. Riding two winners at Cheltenham in 2010 (Poker De Sivola in the NH Chase and Thousand Stars in the County Hurdle) shot her to another level.

Seabass won a Leopardstown Chase en route to giving his rider the spin of a lifetime around the Aintree fences when third in the Grand National and last year’s Prix La Barka (Group 2) success in Auteuil on the remarkable Thousand Stars just confirmed Walsh’s ability to perform at the highest echelon.

She gave Your Busy a fantastic ride to win the Kerry National last September and now the Irish Grand National is added to the list after a “rollercoaster” week.

Pinhooking is the day job now though. “It’s something I’ve done now for the last couple of years. Some years have gone well, some years haven’t. I set out at the end of the summer to buy a few yearlings, however many I can afford and what I like. It’s not easy but I put my head down this year and went further afield. I went to Germany and went to France and it seems to have paid off.

“I’ve sold one and he sold well but he ticked all the right boxes. He was by a very fashionable sire that everyone wants now. He did everything right. He was very sharp. No doubt he’s going to win and when you can go into a sale with that kind of confidence before he even breezes, and then for him to breeze as he did - he was very professional and good. People know then.”

Having top lot was great but it isn’t in the same hemisphere as winning a National.

“I needed to get that touch to be able to afford to go on and continue doing what I’m doing. To top a sale is brilliant but it’s not riding an Irish National winner. I would hate to come across like someone that takes things for granted.

“A lot of people top the sales the whole time and consider it absolutely unbelievable. And it is. It’s brilliant. But I am a very lucky girl to have felt both... My business mind says it’s more important to be topping the sales but my heart would take the Irish National; the buzz, the adrenaline, the feeling. I can’t describe it.”

Forever cheery, cracking jokes and with a no-nonsense delivery that is familiar to anyone that has listened to Ted and Ruby, Walsh is completely humble and thankful. She describes what she has achieved as “fairytale stuff”.

In the latest chapter, Thunder And Roses travelled brilliantly and jumped well for the most part. Turning for home Walsh felt excitement as she considered the possibility of being third.

As her willing partner kept ploughing on, Thunder And Roses winged the last and “the rest is history”.

Yet Katie could so easily have missed out. She actually turned down the ride on Lion Na Bearnai because Ross initially planned on running Call It Magic on Monday. He had a change of heart though.

“I could have strung him up, needless to say.”

She might be watching from the sidelines until Sandra Hughes called. Fate or dumb luck?

“I don’t know. I just go ‘God, isn’t it mad the way that works out?’”

It was thrilling and emotional too, with everyone thinking of the late Dessie Hughes, his wife Eileen and Sandra. Katie has a thought for the Osborne Lodge staff too, that have barely missed a beat in the past few months. She doesn’t ever mention the fact that she was emulating her father and brother.

She was emulating Ann Ferris and Nina too, just the third lady rider to win an Irish Grand National. Sometimes you wonder if her achievements and those of Carberry’s are defined a bit too much by gender.

You can see why, as racing is one of the few sports apart from the other equestrian sports and motor sport, where the sexes do battle on an equal footing.

But when someone books Katie or Nina, it’s not to boost gender equality. These are two of the best amateurs of all time.

“I don’t think it was great to win as a female jockey. I just think it’s great to win a National. People love that and play off it. Even in Aintree - the highest-placed female. But I don’t think of it like that. I just think it was great to be third. I don’t think it’s great to be third ’cos I’m a girl.”

Plenty jockeys have never gotten around Aintree. Plenty have never won an Irish National. Plenty have never ridden in those races. There can be no special treatment and there isn’t.

“The lads out there, at the start of the National, they’re not saying ‘We’d better keep an eye out for Katie and Nina’. They are in their left one! They’re looking after themselves, thinking that hopefully they might ride the winner. They’re not going giving me or Nina a bit of light because we’re female. Nor would I give them. It’s hard enough without looking after somebody else.

“In fairness to the lads though… I don’t know how some professional golfers or runners or swimmers would fancy being beaten by a bird. I don’t know if it would go down that well. It’s great being accepted. Maybe there is a bit of abuse or slagging going on, I don’t know, but I don’t think there is. They don’t look at me as being a female jockey. They just look at me as being a jockey.”

She’s just doing her thing, the same as any other workplace as far as she’s concerned. No big deal.

The gender issue is there once more for the English Grand National, because a woman has never won it. Walsh has the highest finish with third on Seabass in 2012.

This week there is focus on Carberry, more so again after winning the Fox Hunters’ Chase on Thursday with On The Fringe.

The intensity of the build-up involving Walsh three years ago was the equal to what is happening this year as the incomparable A.P. McCoy bows out.

Seabass had the form, Ted was an astute trainer and there was his daughter on board bidding to become the first female to win it. Except she wasn’t. She was just trying to win it.

“It was the first National I ever rode in as well. Two or three weeks coming up to the National the phone was hopping but it was great. Some days you’d let it get on top of you. ‘Oh God this horse is gonna’ turn out favourite for the English National’. And he was but he deserved to be.

“He had won a good handicap chase in Limerick, came back and sluiced up in a Leopardstown Chase. Then he won a competitive two-mile chase with Ruby around Naas. So everyone was thinking ‘If he stays, he wins’. That’s why he was favourite and then I was in the mix as well and it snowballed from there.

“But I’m the kind of person that lives in the moment and what will be, will be. If it happens, it happens. The homework is done and there’s no more we can do. Life is hard enough without looking back and thinking what you should have done last week. God, I couldn’t even surround myself with people like that. It would drive you mental.”

There was a split-second when the world thought she was going to do it.

“There was a split-second I thought I was going to win too to be honest. And I didn’t get that feeling the other day in the Irish National. When I turned in on Seabass coming down to the second last I said to myself ‘I’m going to win this’. I rarely say that to myself. That’s just how well I felt I was going.

“But then I kinda knew going down to the last I wasn’t really going to be able to pick up out of the back of it. He got under the last but to be fair to him, he ran and he jumped and he was absolutely brilliant. There was no more anyone could have done on the day I don’t think.”

Newmarket is to the forefront of her mind now and she has two for the Craven Sales next week, “a nice sharp filly and a lovely Showcasing colt. I have one for Donny, an Arcano colt, and then I’ve got a big Rip Van Winkle that I bought in France going back to France. And I have a Big Bad Bob that’s going to Goresbridge.”

Ruby has said that he couldn’t go a similar route when he retires from the saddle because he doesn’t know enough about pedigrees but Katie insists she is far from an expert either.

“It’s probably my weakest point to be honest. Pedigree is something you can learn and get to know over the years. I’d know the fashionable sire, something that’s going in the right direction. But I’d be more about trying to pick up a nice, sharp individual. I’d be buying more on spec than on book but obviously you need to have the book as well.

“You’re looking for something that you can see another twist in. There’s a lot of money knocking around in the bloodstock world and something you might value at €30-35,000 is now making €55-60,000 and it’s hard to see the next turn in that. But that’s what you’re trying to do.

“It’s chancy now. I enjoy it and Dad used to do it years ago until we got busy at home. It’s just something that happened over the last couple of years. The first year I went, it was far from a disaster, but I was buying the wrong kind of horse altogether. I was buying more of a National Hunt horse, which isn’t ideal, although I ended getting Summer Star out of it and that wasn’t so bad I suppose.

“I had a little rethink about what I was after doing wrong and ended up buying a nice sharp colt with a good pedigree by Dutch Art and he turned out to be Caspar Netscher.

“He won his maiden about two and a half weeks after I sold him. He went on to win the Gimcrack and the Mill Reef the same year. He won the German Guineas… it was easier then to go back and buy them the next year and people maybe thought I wasn’t completely off my rocker; I was capable of selling something!

“That’s what everyone wants in the bloodstock world - to be involved in the breeding, the buying, the selling, the training or the riding of a good horse.”

The modesty is sincere and she is so grateful for all that she has achieved. But that should not overshadow the latent talent and incredible hard work that goes with it behind the scenes, whether it is to hone her riding skills or produce a ready-to-run two-year-old.

“You’re trying to get something to a point… they need to be a very good ride. I spend a lot of time riding them myself and I’d be mortified if I met someone next week and they said ‘I got that colt and he was horrible, ran away on me’. Mortified. So they need to be really good rides and hopefully put the foot in the right direction. (Record) a good time, get sold and go on and win their maiden.

“I couldn’t tell you when I saw Caspar Netscher that he was going to win a Mill Reef and a Gimcrack. You can wrap yourself up in that all you want but you don’t. You do a couple of bits with them. I always knew he was very smart, very sharp and had a lovely way of going. I thought he would win his maiden and he did but then he just kept improving. He put my name on the map.”

Just another string to a heavily-garlanded bow.