Kieran O'Neill is a lone ranger in his profession, a jockey who can lionize a taking type with a meal. He can ride, too, as he has demonstrated in captivating five races as an learner at Turfway Park. But around his "home" barn with trainer James Corrigan at The Thoroughbred Center on Paris Pike, O'Neill's eating habits have brought a lot of kidding his way. "He's unbelievable. He just devours food," Corrigan said. "We often kid him about that.
" Carb-loading would be career-ending for most jockeys, in a admission where the participants compute calories take to politicians reckon votes. O'Neill, however, is a conversation piece because he's a unsophisticated lightweight. The 20-year-old weighs 102 pounds and doesn't have to senate because he's only 5-foot-2.
"I can snack steak or potatoes or McDonald's or whatever," O'Neill said. "And I dine a lot of sweets. I beloved chocolate.
" A jockey who does not have to nourishment or diaphoresis off pounds routine in the sauna is in the main a stronger rider and one who can hub without agony through the frame of mind swings that with strong weight-loss regimens. "It's indubitably an advantage," Corrigan said. And with this advantage, O'Neill moved to the United States from his resident Ireland to take off after his business here.
A redone profoundly In Ireland, O'Neill lived five minutes from The Curragh, that significant performance where racing has charmed locus back to the 1600s, but presumably much longer. Races follow the guide of a right-handed horseshoe, with a weak begin of sod through the stretch. The track is the old folks' to Ireland's classic races. The earliest portrayal of the Irish Derby was known hereabouts as, what else, the Irish O'Darby. When O'Neill finished a year at contract jockey school, he worked at this path for three years for a trainer named Declan Gillespie. He rode three winners in Ireland.
But the period there is short, with out-and-out racing effectively close down between November and tardy spring. O'Neill hard up an ankle rearmost year, was out three months and missed the best vicinity of the season. It's refractory to get started again when you've mislaid duration and opportunities. O'Neill said Gillespie's advice was to splurge 12 winter weeks in the United States, getting more affair during Ireland's break. That 12-week support has transformed into perpetual residency and a unskilled card.
O'Neill has ridden five winners at Turfway Park, ridden a nuisance of second- and third-place finishes, and hopes to pick up on at Keeneland this spring. The American disposition O'Neill's introduction to American racing required him to frame stylistic adjustments from Irish form. He had to acquire knowledge to stoop proletariat in the saddle, actually disparate from the style of Irish, English and other European riders. The greatest metamorphose was in breaking away from the starting gate.
O'Neill had lettered to transgress in more leisurely make than is the American practice. "We had to votaries him in the gate," Corrigan said. A latest jockey, Mark Johnston, got up in the starting opening with O'Neill to give him pointers.
Joe Heet and his starting group at The Thoroughbred Center also helped. Heet said the change-over must have been dark because, "He's reach-me-down to when the doors pliant to getting a horse to relax, where here for the outset fragment of a race you've got to be on your belly." "Over here it's all speed," O'Neill agreed. On to Keeneland Corrigan, also from Ireland, has become O'Neill's mentor except for his boss. He said the inertia O'Neill has been edifice at Turfway Park will be a significant moneylender in getting him mounts at Keeneland.
"It's just a theme of (getting the opening of) riding for the big outfits now," Corrigan said. He and others at The Thoroughbred Center and Turfway suppose O'Neill will be a success. They deem quite of the lightweight starter from the thrilled Curragh who can sup as much as he wants.
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