On the opening pages of Sacrifice, Oisín Murphy’s blunt and engaging new book, he introduces himself with a series of advisories. Not as a champion jockey or as one of the best riders in Europe but as a “deeply flawed young man” in ceaseless conflict with himself. It is immediately clear that this will not be a story about redemption or tidy resolutions, or happy endings, sport’s stock-in-trade.
At the beginning, for full disclosure, he mentions the serious infringements and suspensions that blew a crater in his career three years ago and the “self-destruct button” that is “omnipresent and varies in size depending on how I’m feeling inside”. The first reference to his “addiction to alcohol” and “the destruction that caused” appears on page three. On this window there are no curtains.
“A few people who have read it already said ‘it’s incredible how negative you are’,” he says in conversation. “But that is the way it is, unfortunately.”
The framework for the book is a diary of the 2024 season, when he won the Flat jockey’s championship in Britain for the fourth time. Murphy says he rejected the first approach from Penguin but was eventually persuaded by the structure they proposed. He could see some good in it.
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“When they said it’s just on 2024 I almost felt it would be therapeutic because I could vent and voice my dissatisfaction to paper,” he says. “If Penguin didn’t think it was worth publishing then so be it, but it wasn’t going to hurt me by sending voice notes [to James Hogg, the ghostwriter] every day.
“Although he was understanding that I was not in great form every day, and very busy, we’d speak maybe two or three days in a row and then mightn’t speak for a week. Did I find it therapeutic? I think so, yeah. I was able to get stuff off my chest. I didn’t spare anything. And because I was just talking into a phone most of the time, I felt the freedom to do that. I didn’t have to look at anyone’s facial expression.”
What he sometimes sees in other faces is judgment. In racing’s febrile neighbourhood, it is impossible to be ambivalent about Murphy. He is articulate and talented and charming and divisive. So many of the consequential things in his life are not a secret: the triumphs, the calamities, the episodes of self-destruction; falling down, getting up, falling down. Getting up. Everyone sees, everyone talks, people gossip.
How he is perceived by others is a constant churn in his head. In the book he writes that he “often wonders what people think of me while I’m chatting to them”. In another passage he writes that, in public, he “will always give off the air of being confident and in good humour” even if his mind is swirling. In front of an interviewer’s microphone, he is smart and polished and giving in his answers, and not all jockeys are like that. But there are days when being that character is a confection baked for the cameras.
“This is how sick I am,” he says. “I will type my name into Twitter [now X] almost daily – almost as much as I look at the jockeys’ championship – and I will search for negative comments. I will go looking to see what people have said. The bottom line is I’m searching for that damaging information. There’s this merry-go-round of trying to prove people wrong and trying to prove myself wrong. That actually, I’m having a bad day but I’m going to salvage it by winning on the next one.”
[ Oisín Murphy turns to counselling amid demands as champion jockey in BritainOpens in new window ]
For example, he talks about last Sunday at Epsom. In the first race he was beaten on an even-money favourite in a three-horse race; in the next he was turned over on a 1-4 shot, when losing was seemingly inconceivable. Nobody in Britain rides more winners than Murphy, or has more fancied runners every day, but in his mind winning and losing is not a zero-sum transaction.
“I had to take myself off to the sauna [which was not in operation] and I smoked four cigarillos in a row because I was just absolutely melted. And I couldn’t go outside because people would ask for photos or ask to chat – which they’re entitled to do, all very nice people. But I was really fried. I didn’t feel that I messed up on those horses but whatever way I was, I was fried about them.”
His next ride, another favourite, was beaten too. But he finished the day with a double. Did that make him feel better? That feeling comes and goes on the breeze.
“It’s hard for people to relate to, maybe, because people just see, ‘this guy is flying’,” he says. “‘Provided he doesn’t pick up a drink he has everything to live for’ – and they’re right. But it doesn’t feel like that to me. I’m stuck in this, ‘Where is the next Group One winner going to come from?’ There are times when I don’t enjoy [racing], even with the best intentions and me trying to be upbeat. There are days when I ride lots of winners and it might give me some peace and quiet for a few hours, but it’s only a matter of time before it disappears again.”
Murphy’s tendency for self-destruction grew in harmony with his drinking. For years he was a highly functioning alcoholic. In 2019, 2020 and 2023 he rode more than a thousand horses in Britain; last year, he was just four shy of that tally. Of his rivals for the title only Tom Marquand and Rossa Ryan have tried to keep pace with those staggering numbers. Somehow, Murphy got up in the mornings.
“I’m viewed maybe by the guys on social media that slate me every day as this guy who really enjoyed a party,” he says. “But most of my destruction was done on my own, at home, drinking until three or four in the morning. I found it very easy to flip into that routine of just going racing, getting back [home], getting drunk on my own and doing the same every day – blacking out on the sofa.
“It’s not covered in the book because I didn’t have that kind of routine in 2024. I had a very good year in 2024 with sobriety and with my mental health. Although I had lots of low days in the saddle I was [he pauses to think of the word] pretty sane.
[ Oisin Murphy speaks of reaching rock bottom during battle with alcoholOpens in new window ]
“Then, in February, at the beginning of 2025, I was not in a good place. I managed to slip back into it, hiding from yourself but also hiding from others. Was there a trigger? No. Things were going quite well. I just hadn’t fully surrendered [to being an alcoholic]. I wanted to drink like a gentleman. I wanted to give it another chance [even though] I had given this a try already 10 or 20 or 500 times – it’s irrelevant, the number. It wasn’t until the end of April that I managed to knock it on the head after the last episode”
The “last episode” that Murphy refers to was an extremely serious accident at the end of April when the car he was driving left the road and crashed into a tree. According to police, nearly twice the legal limit for alcohol was present in his system. Murphy and his female passenger were taken to hospital with injuries later described in court as not serious. Miraculously, nobody else was hurt.
At Reading Magistrates’ Court in July, Murphy was fined £70,000 and banned from driving for 20 months. He escaped any suspension from the British Horseracing Authority, although “an extremely strict set of conditions” have been attached to his riding license.
Not for the first time in his life, he was guilty of a catastrophic lapse in judgment. Condemnation of his latest transgression was fierce and widespread. In court, his solicitor read an unconditional apology on his behalf. In racing, not everyone was listening. After the hearing, one of the analysts on Racing TV said that Murphy had been “living a double life”.
His pillar relationships survived the earthquake. Murphy has ridden for Andrew Balding since he arrived in England 13 years ago, and that friendship has endured. His principal retainer is with Qatar Racing and Sheikh Fahad, the head of that operation, has stood by him too. “Sheikh Fahad could easily have dropped me several times,” Murphy writes in the book. Time and again he has depended on the forbearance of others.
“How many chances can you give someone? They have been so patient and loyal. They know I don’t intentionally do things like I did at the beginning of this year, but unfortunately there are huge consequences, not just on me but on those around me.
“We’ve seen this before [alcoholism in racing]. I’m acutely aware of it. Drink has killed Walter Swinburn and Pat Eddery. [Eddery was champion jockey in Britain 11 times]. I knew about that before I got going myself as a jockey. I was very determined that it wouldn’t happen to me. I’m determined as ever and I’m having a good stretch. But I had good stretches in the past and I’m sure they had good stretches.
“It was said at an AA meeting that I was at recently, that although with every day your period of sobriety gets longer, the alcoholic is still growing every day too. When fellahs relapse they never go back on the drink less harmful than before. It is always more harmful. I’ve seen that myself.”
Once Murphy committed to the book, he couldn’t just do it on autopilot and not agonise about the outcome, like so many in this genre before him. It became another thing to worry about.
“It was such pressure writing the book because I was second in the jockeys’ championship in 2023 – obviously having missed 40 days through suspension. In 2024, when I agreed to do the book, I had to win the championship. Otherwise I was wasting my own time speaking to James Hogg and I was wasting Penguin’s time. Nobody wants to hear about a jockey that finishes second in the championship.”
In the last chapter the book Murphy said he had no desire to win the jockeys’ title again this year. “I can officially confirm that 2024 will be my last championship, at least for a few years, but probably forever.”
He couldn’t keep that promise. With a fortnight left in the title race, Murphy is lapping the field, a steady 40 winners ahead of Billy Loughnane, his nearest pursuer. At Kempton on Wednesday evening he rode a double; at Salisbury a day later he rode four winners; for the Arc meeting at Longchamp this weekend he has a hand of picture cards and aces.
In the book he writes that he doesn’t allow “enough room in my head for the things that go right in my life and concentrating too much on what can potentially go wrong”.
That conflict continues. Unresolved.
– Sacrifice, by Oisin Murphy, published by Penguin.
