The best there's ever been

It's said never meet your heroes because you will invariably be disappointed. Richard Dunwoody never disappointed.

His enforced retirement will have gutted him but it's unlikely there will be an admission of that. It's just not his way. The word style has been invariably associated with Dunwoody in the saddle but on terra firma it applies just as much.

Probably the greatest perk a journalist has is access to people. Interviews may be artificial, what with deadlines to be met and the subject aware of the notebook but at least there is communication of sorts.

So it was to this background that I arranged to interview the great jockey on a swelteringly hot Galway Hurdle day in 1995. This was serious stuff. Dunwoody was the idol of his generation. West Tip, Miinehoma and Desert Orchid had seen to that.

There was also the personality. Focus and will to win were the words most used to sum Dunwoody up. Getting past the red lollipop in front of the rest was a consuming passion. Second was nowhere. So what happens, Dunwoody on Saibot is beaten a head in the big race by No Tag.

Oh my good God. He's bound to want to do an interview now. Just what he needs. Possible phoned excuses back to the editorial Fuhrer waited in line for consideration.

Dunwoody returned to weigh in. A mumbled apology and introduction from a sweating journo' was greeted with: "Just give me one minute. I've got to clean myself up a bit. I'll meet you here."

Sure enough a minute later he emerged, found a relatively quiet corner in the bustling weigh-room and gave unwarranted focus to a series of banal questions for half an hour. One question was particularly inane.

"You've won and done everything. Why keep going when you could be broken up at any time?" Read the answer and consider the agony Dunwoody has gone through in the last few days.

"You could ask Mick Kinane the same question. He's won and done everything, made his money, but he keeps going. We do this because we love it," he said.

The job may have entailed the knowledge that a fall would come on average once every 35 rides and that injury was inevitable but how many of us can say we love what we do. What most of us can do is choose when to leave but Dunwoody has been denied that luxury after dominating the toughest profession of the lot for over a decade. It hardly seems fair.

That dominance came at a cost. By 1995, he had forsaken the intensity of the jockeys' championship, happy with three in the bag and wanting to remain in love with his sport. But the more relaxed man only made the previous championship seeker seem even more intensely driven.

A colleague had interviewed Dunwoody during the height of his 1993 epic duel with Adrian Maguire and was shocked with the emotional effort it took Dunwoody to articulate what he was experiencing. "His face literally screwed up with the effort of every word. I honestly thought he wasn't going to make it through to the end," he remembers.

Dunwoody made it through alright and won. Only then did he decide to change his priorities. On the track winning isn't everything, it's the only thing.

What outlet he now finds for that competitive zeal is a problem but one that Dunwoody will solve in his own private way. A lively intelligence has always made him seem apart from some of his more earthy and loud colleagues. It's a detachment that has only added to the aura.

"In my opinion Richard was the best I've ever seen and probably the best there has ever been," the Gold Cup and Grand National winning rider Mick Fitzgerald said yesterday.

For those of us who saw in Dunwoody the ideal combination of the panache of John Francome, the drive of Jonjo O'Neill and the professionalism of Peter Scudamore there is no argument. Dunwoody has been the best.

His own disappointment at not ending on his own terms will be immense. But he is retiring in one piece, an ending not always granted to jockeys, and where is the disappointment in that.