Claire Byrne

The Clare Byrne Show on Newstalk with Aviva Insurance.

This week for What Made Me, I'm delighted to be joined by former champion jockey, grand national winner and retired national hunt jockey, Davie Russell.

Hello, Davie.

Great to have you with us.

I'm going to go back, back, back now with you.

And I was looking at pictures in your book, which is out in paperback last night, when you were a tiny, tiny tot on the back of a horse.

Were you a child who grew up with horses?

So that's that's I would have thought that you sort of grew up in it, you know, that there were.

But that's that's more of a learned thing then that you were figuring it out for yourself as you went along.

And... So they didn't notice when you were gone with the horses for the day?

I was reading back on an interview you did with The Guardian, I think it was, where you were saying or they were saying about you that you don't really talk to the horses.

Certainly when you're racing, it's more of a sort of a feel for the engine.

That's how you operate.

Is that right?

But like if the ears are back, for example, or if there's a certain sort of a snort, you're learning from all of that, right?

Okay.

That you're going from that you're working off.

And look again, I was looking back at all of the injuries and all of the falls and every bit of you that was broken up in bits over the years.

And then I was thinking about that in the context of Dancing with the Stars, which was 2024, wasn't it?

Like, how did you do that?