Under The Radar: Siobhán Rutledge

Siobhán Rutledge only ever had one answer when she was asked about her goals.  Any time she was interviewed, any time the camera rolled or the recorder whirred or a microphone was thrust in her direction.  What’s your main goal Siobhán?  What do you want to achieve in your career? 

Ride out my claim.

Objective realised now.  Goal achieved.  Claim gone.  She’s going to need a new answer.

She was good on Stone Bear at Fairyhouse last Thursday too.  She gets some tune out of Ross O’Sullivan’s filly.  She has ridden her five times in races now, and she has won on her three times. 

This was a little different to the first two though.  Ninety-four winners on the board, her career’s goal within touching distance.  Stone Bear had run well at Naas three weeks earlier, she had finished off her race well to take third place in a five-furlong handicap.  They thought that the step back up to six furlongs would bring her forward again.

“We had the race picked out for her for a while,” says Siobhán now, “and we knew that she was going there in great form.  She didn’t really get into her rhythm over five furlongs at Naas, so we were looking forward to going back over six with her.  My plan was to settle her just behind the leaders, but I was ready to take a pull too if they went fast up front.”

They did go fast up front, so the rider took her filly back as they raced to the bend.  That’s what good riders do, have a plan but adapt as circumstances change.  Good draw in stall four, but she didn’t want to get stuck in traffic, she didn’t want to ride her filly for luck.  She wanted to deliver her filly with one run, in clear sailing, so she angled out off the rail at the top of the home straight.  

Still only fifth as they straightened up, she made her way to the outside and asked her filly for her effort.  Stone Bear was tuned in, she picked up nicely, hit the front at the furlong marker and stayed on strongly to win by over a length.

“It’s unbelievable,” says Siobhán.  “When I started out, I never really thought that it was realistic, that I could ride out my claim.  Ninety-five winners.  I remember when I got to within 17 winners thinking, this could still take a few years.  But it was within reach and I really knuckled down.  I’m just delighted that I was able to get there.”

Magi Gal was the first of the 95, for John McConnell in an apprentices’ handicap at Navan in September 2019.  She got up to beat Gavin Ryan on Lady Rosebud by a nose, the pair of them clear.  

She lost her 10lb claim at Navan too, reduced to 7lb.  She went from 7lb to 5lb at Bellewstown.  Every time she dropped a little, she got closer to her goal, but she also felt that she had to improve by the 2lb that she lost.  Hers is a career of continual progression.

Only two Irish female flat jockeys before her have ridden out their claims before last week: Joanna Morgan and Cathy Gannon.  Siobhán is a member of an exclusive club.

“Joanna Morgan and Cathy Gannon are trailblazers,” she says.  “I'm lucky that they came before me.  I’ve always had a big interest in Cathy’s career.  And she was a big help to me, she did some work with me on the simulator when I was claiming 7lb.  She got it, she knew the areas in which I needed to improve.  We have a similar body size, and it was important for me then to look bigger in the saddle.  To look strong and aggressive.”

Siobhán’s late father Ger rode as an amateur and kept a few horses at their home, just outside Ashbourne in County Meath.  He would take Siobhán and her twin brother Gerry racing, he’d sit them up on horses, let them ride around the fields at home.  Sadly, Ger passed away when Siobhán was just nine.

“We had to lose all the horses at home when Dad passed away,” she says. “But it made me determined to work with horses.  It’s strange, I felt that horses brought me close to him.”

She started riding lessons when she was 10 and, when Transition Year in school came around, she determined that she would go like to spend it in the Racing Academy and Centre of Education in Kildare.

“I had to write a letter to the principal in the school and everything!  Making the case for spending the year in RACE.  What the year entailed, how it would benefit me.  All that.  They let me do it, but the deal was that I would come back and do the Leaving Cert.”

She went to RACE, enjoyed it there, learned lots, was placed with Johnny Murtagh, learned more.  

“I loved it at Johnny’s.  He was so helpful.  He has great time for young people who are trying to make their way.”

She fulfilled her part of the deal too, she went back to school and did her Leaving Cert.  She did well too, she got her place in Dublin City University studying Geography and Human Development, and she started going into Eddie Lynam’s on weekends, the lure of horses at odds with her studies.  

“I got fairly sick then,” she says.  “I got glandular fever, and that knocked me back in college.  Then I got a text from a girl who was in RACE with me, Amy O’Hanlon, asking me if I wanted to go into John McConnell’s.”

John McConnell has been a massive part of Siobhán Rutledge’s career to date.  Magi Gal, her only winner in 2019, was trained by John McConnell.  She rode 11 winners in 2020, and 10 of them were for John McConnell.

“John was brilliant to me from the start.  I was so green when I went in there, but I learned so much.  As well as riding, I spent time on the ground too, learning about how a yard works, veterinarian stuff, administration, everything.  I went racing a lot, even when I wasn’t riding.  And John would put me up whenever he could.”

She had 79 winners in the bag by the end of the 2024 season, her claim down to 3lb, but she had had it in her head for a while that she would like to go to Australia.  Further her experience, enhance her knowledge.  She said it to some of the lads in the weigh room at Dundalk one November evening, and Billy Lee suggested that she give Chris and Corey Munce a call.

“Billy’s sister Gillian had worked for Chris for a few years, and she got on great there.  So I called him that night.  I figured that that was the time to go, go there for the winter, be back for the spring.  I had to stay up until about midnight before I could call!”

Australia was a culture shock, but it was brilliant.  She hit the ground running, and learned as she went.  There were early starts in Eagle Farm in Queensland, and in Gold Coast, about 80 kilometres south west.  They started work at 3.30am, so she’d be up at 2.00am.  Every morning, six days a week.

“Chris and Corey were great, they gave me lots of opportunities.  It was all about speed, 1000 metres on a bend.  I rode in a few 800-metre races as well, and 400-metre jump-outs on the dirt.  Everything happened so quickly, you wouldn’t be jumping and getting into a rhythm.  It was jump and run!”

She went to Australia for three months and stayed for 12.  She rode 12 winners during her time there, and she took some time to see some of Australia.  She travelled too, she went to New Zealand, went to Japan.  She figured, she had gone that far.

“There was a language barrier too!  The racing terminology was different.  Like, a trainer told me that this horse could be a bit sticky, and I had to ask him what that meant.  It was all on the clock too.  Timed gallops.  I had never done timed gallops before, and it taught me a lot about the clock.  It made me more confident in my ability to read the pace of a race.”

She was back in Ireland in January this year.  She had four rides at Dundalk on her first day back on the 13th.  Stone Bear was one of them, in the six-furlong three-year-olds’ handicap.  She won on her and she was off and running again.

“People have been so good to me since I have come back.  John McConnell obviously, and Ross, and John Bowden, Stone Bear’s owner.  Harry Rogers has always been a great supporter of mine.  I just want to keep on improving now as a rider.  Work hard.  Ride as many winners as I can.”

New beginnings.  New goals.