Nina Carberry was born on July 21, 1984, the daughter of Tommy and Pamela Carberry. Tommy was twice overall champion Irish jockey and five times champion National Hunt jockey. He won the Grand National as a jockey on L’Escargot in 1975 and as a trainer with Bobbyjo in 1999. He also won the Cheltenham Gold Cup twice on L’Escargot in 1970 and 1971. He won a third Gold Cup on Brown Lad in 1975 and also won two Irish Grand Nationals on him in 1975 and 1976.
She is very much part of a famous racing family. Three brothers, Paul, Philip and Peterjon Carberry, are or were jockeys, while her husband, Ted Walsh Jr, whom she married in February 2012, is the brother of Ruby and Katie Walsh.
Nina rode her first winner on Noel Meade’s Sabrinsky in the Ladies’ Derby at the Curragh on July 15, 2001, but it was over jumps that she was to make her name.
She achieved her first Cheltenham Festival winner on the Paul Nolan-trained Dabiroun in the Fred Winter Juvenile Handicap Hurdle in 2005. It was the first time in 18 years that a female jockey had won a race at the Cheltenham Festival. In 2005/06, she became Ireland’s champion amateur rider for the first time and repeated the feat the following season.
Nina rode her second Cheltenham Festival winner aboard Heads On the Ground in the 2007 Cross Country Chase, then won it again on Garde Champetre in both 2008 and 2009, to give her a record three wins in the race. Throughout her career she was among the very best cross-country chase riders, both at Cheltenham and over Punchestown’s famous banks course.
She won Cheltenham’s Foxhunter Chase two years running aboard On The Fringe in 2015 and 2016. She also extended her number of Festival Cross County Chase victories to four in 2016 with Josies Orders when first pas the post Any Currency was subsequently disqualified.
Between 2006 and 2016, she rode in the Grand National six times, completing the course on four occasions, her best result being a seventh-place finish on Character Building in 2010. In 2015, she won the Fox Hunters’ Chase at Aintree riding On The Fringe.
She became the first female jump jockey in Ireland or Britain to win a Grade 1 race when landing the Champion INH Flat Race on Leading Run at the 2006 Punchestown Festival for long-time supporter Noel Meade. She won the same race again the following year on Mick The Man, also trained by Meade. In 2011 she became only the second woman rider to win the Irish Grand National, scoring on Organisedconfusion, trained by her uncle Arthur Moore.
In 2013 she became assistant trainer to Noel Meade. In 2015 she started riding out for Aidan O’Brien during the summer. She gave birth to her first child, Rosie, in May 2017.
On 21 September 2017, in her first race since November 2016, she won as a mother for the first time, scoring on Cask Mate at Ballinrobe in the Connacht Tribune flat race.
On April 28, 2018, the final day of the Punchestown Festival, Nina announced her retirement after winning the cross-country chase on Josies Orders for trainer Enda Bolger and owner JP McManus.
She retired at the age of 33 having ridden 395 winners in Ireland (345 National Hunt, 50 Flat) plus 17 in Britain. She rode seven winners at the Cheltenham Festival, making her the most successful female jockey in the festival’s history. All bar the first one of those were for JP McManus and trained by Enda Bolger.
