Inside Track: Shane Gray back to where it all began

Jockey Shane Gray was back on home turf last Wednesday. Well, not exactly turf – it’s over 25 years since horses galloped over grass at Dundalk Stadium.

Since 2007, it’s been all-weather racing on the local circuit, the first – and still only – venue in Ireland with a sand surface.

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Gray, from Dundalk’s Castletown area, had his first mount on the track a few years after it opened.

He was apprenticed to the Stack stable in Co Tipperary, at the time overseen by Tommy Stack, who, in a glittering in the saddle, had his finest moment when he drove the famous Red Rum to victory in the third of the Ginger McCain-trained steeplechaser’s Aintree Grand National wins.

Speaking on Wednesday last after taking two mounts, riding one of them to a fast-finishing second, 30-year-old Gray had nothing but praise for Stack. “He was a great mentor – I couldn’t have been given a better start.”

It helped the teenager as he set out on his career. He went on to ride 18 winners in Ireland before going to England, most of them for the Stack stable, with ten coming at Dundalk.

His last winner at the local track was in 2014. It was after that when he moved to the north of England stable of Kevin Ryan, and though now riding freelance, he maintains a link with the Irishman, getting the leg up on many of his runners.

He also has mounts for the powerful Karl Burke stable, and is also associated with another Irish-born trainer, Richard Fahey, who, in his younger days, while living in Clogherhead, lined out with the local GAA team, Dreadnots.

Gray has accumulated the excellent total of 460 winners in England, including one at Ascot for racing’s biggest owners, Sheikh Mohammed.

He’s also been on the market, the home of British racing, Newmarket. But an even greater achievement was his four-timer at a Carlisle meeting, in 2019.

He has yet to ride the winner of a Group 1. Putting that right is one of his ambitions – with age on his side, and being connected to some of the top stables, getting over that particular winning line is not a longshot.

Based in North Yorkshire in the town of Thrisk – home of the late James Herriot, famous author and vet, he proudly tells us – Shane was in Dundalk last week on the request of Kevin Thomas Coleman, a Tipperary-based trainer for whom he has ridden winners in England.

Coleman had Brewing running in a handicap, and was keen to have his pal on board. With several family members there to cheer him on, the local lad took the 7-year-old with a sustained late run, but just couldn’t get to the winner, Exquisite Acclaim.

A winner would have capped his return to where it all began, but it was still good, he said, to have a brief stay in his hometown. He was due back to ride at Wolverhampton on Friday.