He has the looks of a choirboy, the lean wiry build of a teenager and at 16 years and 252 days old is the youngest jockey operating in Ireland or England.
He is still too young to drive a car, but put him in control of half a tonne of thoroughbred and he can coax a horse through the gears and around a jumps track with the best of them. Put him on a horse and the boy becomes a man.
Welcome to Jack Kennedy, who is widely regarded as one of the brightest prospects in the jumps game for many years. He will make his Cheltenham Festival debut in ten days’ time in some of the big handicaps for Gordon Elliott, one of Ireland’s leading trainers.
It could well mark the start of something quite special, a time when Kennedy’s career really takes off. “To ride at Cheltenham would be a dream come true,” Kennedy says. “I’d be delighted just to have one ride. I’ve been once before to watch Paddy [his older brother] ride in 2012. I couldn’t believe the atmosphere.”
To the Irish racing cognoscenti, Kennedy will need no introduction. Since earning his licence and turning professional last May, he has rattled up winners with almost indecent haste — thirty-seven over jumps and eight in flat races. The drums are beating loudly.
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Racing and sport frequently throw up the next prodigy who then, for whatever reason, fails to fulfil his potential. But listen to Elliott. “For a young lad of 16, it is unbelievable what he is doing,” the County Meath-based trainer, who saddles Don Cossack in the Gold Cup, says. “He is getting a lot of support from different trainers and owners. We are lucky to have him and he could end up being very, very good. He has a great pair of hands, he is very good over a jump and he’s a very good worker. Nothing fazes him. He appreciates it all and takes nothing for granted. Keep injury-free and he’s going to have a superb future.”
No doubt that Elliott sees something of himself in Kennedy, which is why he is keen to give him his chance: a kid with no long family history in racing but one who, as soon as he sat on a pony, knew where his destiny lay. He demonstrated an innate ability.
There are not many silver spoons in Dingle, Co Kerry, where he was born. He went to an Irish-speaking school and is reasonably fluent in the language. Dingle, he says, is not the “horsiest place in the world”. His father is a welder, while Elliott’s is a panel beater; his mother, a child minder. Kennedy is the youngest of four brothers with a ten-year gap between him and Paddy, who is attached to Jessica Harrington’s yard, and Michael, in whose pony-racing footsteps he followed. Jack was a triple pony-racing champion. In Ireland that is big news. His first win over fences, and that which he considers his most accomplished, came last year for Elliott on Riverside City in the prestigious Troytown Chase.
Kennedy is 9st 5lb stripped, which is “grand for jumps” and he will get heavier in time, settling, he hopes, at no more than 10st 5lb. He is claiming 3lb now, a dispensation that he will not keep for much longer at this rate. That should have no material effect on his progress as the transition from 5lb to 3lb has not hampered him one jot.
Ask him for his secret and he stops for a moment. “ I suppose you have to have a lot of luck,” he says. “That’s a great help to start. But I am fairly cool, I tend not to panic too much so that helps as well. I will try to keep improving. I like to look through all the other horses’ form before a race — what jumps well and what doesn’t, and who to follow. It’s a big change going from small pony tracks to the bigger tracks.
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“I prefer the jumps,” Kennedy continues. “You get sick of riding on the Flat. In jump racing you never know what is going to happen. It’s the thrill, the adrenaline. I grew up around horses and that helped a lot. Horses are just lovely animals. I didn’t know anything else growing up. “
His efforts at school were focused on how to avoid attending and he went absent as a matter of habit. At 15, he bolted. “My parents supported me 100 per cent,” he says. “There was no point in them trying to stop me.”
Of his fellow jockeys, he most admires Davy Russell. “I have always liked the way he rode,” he says. “When I started watching, he always stood out. He is well able to get a horse settled and jumping well. He’s a great horseman, a joy to watch.”
The final word, for now at least, rests with Elliott. “If he keeps injury-free he’s going to have a very, very good future,” he says. “I can’t remember a 16-year-old coming along and doing what he’s doing. Lads do it at 18 or 19. [Tony] McCoy was 19 when he went to England. Jack’s taken it to a different level.”
Jockeys who started young
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Sir A P McCoy
Recorded his first success aged 17 on Legal Steps at Thurles in 1992. Champion jump jockey on a record 20 successive occasions.
John Francome
The son of a railway fireman had no racing connections before joining Fred Winter’s yard at 16. Had his first winner a year later and was champion jump jockey seven times.
Lester Piggott
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Rode his first winner aged 12 at Haydock Park in 1948. He was 18 when riding the first of a record nine Derby winners in 1954, with his last coming in 1983.
Steve Cauthen
The American had his first winner aged 16 and was the youngest to win the US Triple Crown, in 1978 on Affirmed.
Ryan Moore
First winner at 16 in 2000. Champion jockey three times, in 2006, 2008 and 2009.