YOU WOULDN’T BEGRUDGE him taking the day off, but Dougie Costello hasn’t even considered it.
Tomorrow, the day before the start of the 2015 Cheltenham Festival, he’ll have a couple of rides at Stratford… the same track where he broke his ankle in 2011… the day before Cheltenham began.
“Lightning does sometimes strike twice,” he concedes, but it won’t keep him away from Stratford tomorrow. And as a freelance jockey, there isn’t really a choice. The rides are getting harder to come by these days, and anything with half a chance is worth a shot.
“If you look at it like that I could have stopped riding a month ago,” says Costello, when asked if memories of the pain of being ruled out of Cheltenham four years ago might prompt him to give tomorrow a skip.
Being selective about what rides you take is not a luxury that’s afforded to freelance jockeys who aren’t on a retainer with a particular yard. Nowadays, the number of jockeys is increasing but the runners are becoming more scarce.
However, it’s something Dougie Costello says he’ll “plan to do next year”. His first child — Aoife — was born last March, and wife Aimee recently returned to work. But finding an appropriate work-life balance can be tricky when you’re generally up before 5am to tackle a 200-plus-mile drive — often for the sake of one ride.
A native of Athenry in Galway, 32-year-old Costello has been riding on the UK circuit since 2007. The family home is in York in the north of England, but his beat covers the length and breadth of Britain. It could be Ayr one day, Exeter the next — tracks that are almost 500 miles apart.
“I just go on auto-pilot at this stage,” he says. “We’re living up north but we’ve bought a house down south where I stay if I’m down there. They’re the couple of nights a week when I can catch up on sleep. But then I might not see my wife and child for two or three days at a time.
“I’m still doing two thousand miles a week, up and down the road. It’s pretty hectic, but a lot of lads are the same. You’re like ships passing in the night with your family. I think that’s just racing, but it probably has gotten a little tougher.
“There seems to be less runners nowadays, and driving from one end of the country to the other for one ride here and one ride there can be very demoralising. Sometimes you have to give yourself a shake and ask, is it really worthwhile driving all that way for one ride?
“Especially since we have a child now, the answer is usually no. If I’m offered a ride that’s not much good up in Ayr, I’m probably better off staying at home and collecting Aoife from nursery.
“I got a new car last month and there’s nearly ten thousand miles on her already. It’s just stupid, really. The figures don’t work out either when you sit down with your accountant.”
Jockeys are renowned for being teak-tough when it comes to the physical stakes, but the mental strength required to endure the exhausting day-to-day lifestyle isn’t spoken of quite as often.
Costello rides regularly for top trainers like Jonjo O’Neill and John Quinn, but a long-term retainer with one of those bigger yards would make life far more straightforward.
“What I’m trying to get is that yard with a hundred jumpers to be attached to. I’m working on that. I do enjoy the smaller yards but it doesn’t always make sense financially.”
Costello expects to have four or five spins at Cheltenham this week but, as a freelance jockey, he’s still waiting on his finalised book of rides for the festival.
“Unfortunately a lot of my potential rides are overlapping. There are three in the Fred Winter (Handicap Hurdle) I could ride, but I can only ride one obviously so you have to make a choice. It’s the same in others as well, which is a bit annoying.
“But I know I won’t be going there with a great book of rides this year, which might actually be the best thing. Sometimes if one pops up when you’re not expecting it, that’s the best way to have it.
“Cheltenham is a high-pressure place and there’d be less pressure at Aintree, I find. It’s very difficult for a jockey to really enjoy Cheltenham. There’s just too much at stake.
“If the first day goes well, it can make it slightly easier and you can probably be a bit more relaxed, but if that first day is a disaster, you could be in for a long, unpleasant week.”
AP McCoy will be riding in his last Cheltenham Festival this week. Costello and his colleagues were expecting McCoy to announce his retirement this year, but it won’t be the same when he’s gone.
“What he’s done for the sport is incredible,” Costello says. “There’s a huge number of jockeys, myself included, that owe him a lot. He set the boundaries for all of us and the way he’s pushed our sport is unbelievable.
“I can recall the time when he broke his jaw and wore a mask to ride at Sandown — probably back in 1996 or ’97. I remember looking at that and thinking, if I want to be a jump-jockey I have to be as tough as him, whether that means riding with a broken jaw, a broken arm or whatever.
“Going back years ago, he gave me a lift one day when he was supposed to be heading to London, but he took me easily an hour out of his way to drop me home.
“I wasn’t anybody special, but this was the champion jockey taking an hour out of his day to bring me back to my house. And he was only too happy to do it. I could give you so many examples like that to show you the quality of the man.”
Having experienced the agony of missing Cheltenham before, the plan for Dougie Costello tomorrow at Stratford will be to come through unscathed. Anything after that is a bonus.
His Cheltenham memories aren’t all bad, however. Far from it. A year after injury ruled him out, Costello rode 33-1 shot Countrywide Flame to victory in the Triumph Hurdle on Gold Cup day.
“That probably didn’t hit home at the time. It can be so hard to get rides at Cheltenham, let alone get a winner. Tim Vaughan has yet to train a winner there, which puts it in perspective.
“But I definitely fully appreciate that winner now, although I think it’s time to have another one. Hopefully I can get a bit of luck during the week.”
Aoife might not appreciate it now, but another Cheltenham winner would be the ideal way for the Costellos to mark their daughter’s first birthday later this month.
For now, however, Dougie will settle for surviving Stratford in one piece.
