Brian Crowley

A mechanic’s son from Ballinhassig, Co. Cork, Brian Crowley was born on April 9, 1981. He was given a pony for his eighth birthday and began his racing career with trainer Paddy Mullins aged 13. Mullins’ yard on the way to secondary school and Brian would get off the bus there in the morning, get back on the bus in the afternoon and tell everyone at home how well school was going.

He then started riding as an amateur with Aidan O’Brien and rode his first winner a month after his sixteenth birthday on the O’Brian-trained Making The Cut in the Nenagh Irish National Hunt Flat Race at Tipperary on May 22, 1997.

He enjoyed his biggest success as an amateur on August 27, 1998 when winning the Denny Havasnack Flat Race at Tralee on Moscow Express. Later that year he moved to England and rode for six years for Herefordshire trainer Venetia Williams. He won a Welsh National, rode in the Grand National at Aintree, won 48 races in the 2002/03 season, and scored a combined total of 168 wins in Britain and Ireland.

He was still only 19 when winning the 2000 Welsh National at Chepstow on Venetia Williams’ Jocks Cross, a 14/1 chance. Stable jockey Norman Williamson would normally have come in for the winning mount but for commitments in Ireland. As the stable’s second jockey, Brian made the most of his opportunity. In winning by two and a half lengths, Jocks Cross foiled a huge gamble on runner-up Moral Support who had been backed into 2/1 from 4/1. The nine-year-old out-slogged his rivals in testing conditions to beat the favourite, with a 30-length gap back to Edmond, the previous year's winner.

Three years later, Brian was again the beneficiary following the recently enforced retirement of Williamson when riding 33/1 outsider Thesis to victory in the £100,000 Ladbroke Hurdle at Ascot on December 20, 2003.

All looked to be going well. However, in February 2004, he injured his neck in a fall at Ludlow and was out for ten months. When he returned, Sam Thomas was getting most of the Williams rides and Brian was the forgotten man. He rode 100/1 outsider Astonville for trainer Michael Scudamore in the 2005 Grand National, pulling up at the thirteenth fence after being prominent early.

Brian stuck with it but found himself toiling against a strong tide. He quit for nearly three years, returning to Ireland to work on a stud farm and as an assistant trainer and exercise rider for trainer Paul Cashman. He returned to race riding in 2009 and won aboard 100/1 shot Tenormore for Irish trainer Paul Flynn at Bangor-on-Dee on July 21 while trying to rebuild his career.

Seeking a new start, he left for America, arriving in the cold and snow of in January 2010 and joining top US trainer Jonathan Sheppard. He mucked out stalls, pushed a wheelbarrow, rode out on the roads and jogging rings. By the spring, he was riding races, winning a Flat race on his American debut aboard Air Maggy for Sheppard. He finished second, later elevated to first via disqualification, in his first jump ride, on aboard Honour Emblem for Mike Berryman.

Brian also won his first jump ride for Sheppard, getting Arcadius home first in a Camden allowance race. That summer, he won three of the five races at Saratoga (finishing second in the other two) including the New York Turf Writers Cup Chase on Sermon Of Love. He finished 2010 with nine wins, tied for sixth on the jump jockeys’ list.

He carved out a place in the top five for three seasons, ruled Saratoga, won some of the country’s top races and rode some of the country’s top horses. He won 15 races in 2011, including three at Saratoga, and finished second to Paddy Young in the US jump jockeys’ table.

On May 12, 2012, he won the Grade 1 $150,000 Iroquois Steeplechase at Percy Warner Park in Tennessee with the Sheppard-trained Arcadius. Sadly, Arcadius collapsed and died just minutes later as he was being cooled down after the race.

During that summer he rode a double at Penn National and notched two wins at Saratoga in August, but he then suffered a fall from Divine Fortune at the last fence of the Grade 1 Turf Writers Chase.

By September he’d ridden 13 winners and was lying third behind Ross Geraghty and Darren Nagle in the jockeys’ table. But his season ended prematurely with a fall from Ground Frost in a race at Belmont Park, in which he injured his neck.

After a similar neck injury had essentially ended the rise of a promising career in England, so he knew the dangers. Thus, in December 2012 he announced his retirement, aged 31, saying “Basically, I'm getting arthritis in my bones, it’s just natural. The bones have taken a little bit more pounding and it’s not as solid as a normal neck would be. It’s a decision you’ve got to make and unfortunately I’ve had to make it.”

During his three seasons in America he won 37 of 175 rides (21 per cent) and his horses earned more than $1.2 million. He planned to stay in America and pursued the idea of working at a breeding farm. Calling on his experience away from jump racing back home in Ireland, Brian sent his resume off to some breeding farms, looking to find a job in that part of the American Thoroughbred industry.