Meet the trainees - Ronan Short

Hi my name is Ronan Short. I am 16 years old and am from Newtown Mt Kennedy Co. Wicklow.

My interest in horses started when I was 11 years old and I started doing lessons in a riding school on the weekends.  After a few years of lessons we got a couple of Ponies for ourselves and began hunting and showjumping.  I only became interested in racing when I began riding out for a friend of my dads who used to be a jockey and kept a few point to pointers in his livery yard.  I heard about RACE a couple of years ago and have been interested in coming here since. I got a trial week which was hard work but when I heard the news I got accepted I was delighted.  We are in our eleventh week now and the first group of trainees should be going out soon on workplacement.

Ronan training on RACE Gallops

Meet a few trainees - their story so far

We hope that you enjoy this short video showing four RACE Trainees as they tell their story of experiences of the course so far.

Thanks to Thomas Allen, Darryl Murphy, Patrick Murray and Barry Reynolds for taking part in videoing and giving up their free time to do so.

Meet the trainees - Robert Smithers

My na

My name is Robert Smithers I am 16 years old I am from Athy co kildare. 
My interest in horses began when I was about 9 or 10 when Paddy Crane came to ride out for my granddad he was stuck one day and needed someone to ride out a horse for him.  It was a small 132 pony racer. I had to ride him down the road to the gallops. I did not ride him around the gallops but when I got back to my yard Paddy said to me I would make a good jockey. He said to me I should go to RACE. I asked him about it and he said to me he would show me how to ride proper. 
It took about 2 weeks before I got the hang of it and when I did he showed me how to ride on a gallop and stand up and look like a jockey.

     After a while I got my own horse a 14 2 cob. I went hunting with him for a year. After the hunting season was over I sold him and got a pony racer. I went pony racing / flapping for about 12 races on her.  I had about three 2^nd places and was placed a good few times  in 2013.

I had 4 flappers up in my yard, I didn’t get to race them because I didn’t have time but I rode them out on Maurice Phelan’s gallops. 
That is how I found out about races and learned how to ride horse. 

Robert riding upsides -  Maddenstown