20-year-old jockey Dary JamesCullen died following a fall from My Hoby in the first division of the mares’ maiden Bree point-to-point (held at Wexford Racecourse) on Sunday 23 April 2006. He was unseated at the second fence and apparently trodden on by another horse. The young rider had received immediate medical attention before being rushed to Wexford hospital where he was pronounced dead at 6.30 p.m. that evening.
Dary, born on 4 August 1985 and from Airfield Road, Co Kildare, had become engaged to his girlfriend, Miriam Blackburn, just two weeks earlier.
They met when Dary moved to Enniscorthy some three years earlier to work for trainer Paul Nolan at his Davidstown stables. Paul later described Dary as a “great lad who worked so hard to make a go of his career. It was so sad in the yard this morning. To see his saddle and bridal just hanging there was terrible. An absolute disaster.”
The oldest of five children, Dary was beginning to make a name for himself as a jockey and had, the previous month, steered Clonroche Queen to victory in the Horse & Jockey at Tipperary on March 12.
My Hoby was Dary’s nineteenth mount.
His father, Jimmy, was also a jockey.
A memorial plaque to Dary was unveiled in the Wexford weighing room in July 2006.
