Adam Kirby has had a remarkable journey from giving up on his education when he was barely into secondary school to start riding out for a local trainer to winning the Epsom Derby last month – 20 years later – on the Godolphin colt Adayar. He’s had an interesting career along the way too – including riding winners for then Newmarket trainer Patrick Lawrence Gilligan, who now lives and works in Kentucky. Here Gilligan remembers those days, and talks to Kirby about the ‘huge moment’ at Epsom.
The Epsom Derby, the original Derby, is the daddy of them all. First run in 1780, 95 years before the first Kentucky Derby, it became known as ‘the Blue Riband of the Turf’. In its heyday, half a million people would cover Epsom Downs, the country would stop, virtually every man, woman and child in Britain would have a small flutter on the Derby.
Legend has it that the name was decided on a coin toss between the Earl of Derby and Sir Charles Bunbury. Bunbury may have lost the toss, but he won the first running with Diomed, who in later years became a successful sire in the recently formed United States of America.
Adam Kirby recently rode Adayar to victory in the Derby for Godolphin. It was a huge moment for the well-liked 32-year-old rider, whom I remember as a kid but is now partner of Megan and father of 5-year-old Charlie and 3-year-old Evie.
‘Great tutor’
I knew Adam’s father, Maurice. He had a small farm outside Newmarket and a couple of horses in a shared barn we rented when I first arrived in town with two cheap yearlings and about £50 in my back pocket.
Maurice employed a small Welsh stable hand, known as Taffy, to train and exercise his horses. I remember Taffy one day asked Maurice for a new broom to sweep the yard. A couple of days later, I came into the barn to find Taffy wandering around the place chortling and showing everyone the small plastic kitchen broom Maurice had purchased for him. Maurice knew the value of a pound, and he had a sense of humor.
Adam Kirby hated school, so at age 12 he quit, and started riding out full-time for a local trainer. As soon as he turned 16, another Newmarket trainer, Michael Wigham, took his licence out for him.
“Michael was a great tutor, and a top man, but it was Gay Kelleway who gave me my first ride and that was my first winner,” says Kirby.
Maurice would drive his son to the races in the early days and some of Adam’s earliest winners were for me. The first winner he rode for me was a little filly called Avit, in a lowly claimer. Neither of us were the tidiest or most fashion-conscious individuals and, Adam Kirby and I could be seen sporting Covid hairstyles around the racecourses of Britain well over a decade before Covid hair was even a thing.
A day or two after winning on Avit we were riding back home together after training on the heath. Sir Mark Prescott was standing waiting for his horses to come round, so I thought I would give the aspiring young jockey a plug. I said good morning, pointed to Adam and said, “This is the young apprentice who won on mine the other day, Sir Mark.”
Prescott took a look at Kirby, pulled his cigar out of his mouth and said, “Well its got F-all to do with the jockeys has it!”
Young Kirby didn’t let that encounter throw him off his stride, and the trickle of winners soon turned into a stream.
“I finished second twice in the apprentice championship,” he says. “Luckily, after losing my weight allowance, things kept going and I built up a link with Walter Swinburn and then Clive Cox, who started to give me quality horses in bigger races.”
Upward trajectory
Kirby’s career continued on a gentle upward trajectory. He had to miss his first-born’s birth to ride a G1 winner on Profitable at Royal Ascot in 2016 and won a few more at the top level in the years since, but he had yet to taste glory in one of the Classics.
“I was asked to ride John Leeper in the Derby this year, which was great,” he says. “But then Frankie [Dettori] came available, so I lost the ride. Then Charlie [Appleby, Godolphin trainer] called me and said I could ride Adayar.
“I break Charlie’s yearlings in at our farm and actually broke in Adayar as a yearling. That was the last time I sat on him before I rode him in the Derby. He was lovely and laid back.
“I was pretty laid back about the race. He’d run in the trials and it was just nice to pick up a ride in a race like that. Charlie is a top man and a gentleman and we get on very well, and he is an excellent trainer and a nice person, which counts for a lot. I’d gone out to Dubai a couple of times and rode a couple of winners for Charlie there as well, which was great.”
Adayar had to work fairly hard early on in the Derby. “I had to use a bit of petrol the first furlong and a half to get a good position,” says Kirby. “But from there on it went very smooth he took me into the straight lovely, and luckily we found a gap on the inside. I had a lovely position throughout and he always travelled so I had a great ride and he made things very easy for me [see video below].
“Charlie had told me he would stay very well and he was right. It was quite emotional afterwards. It’s hard to describe. I thought about my mum and dad, my family.”
What of the future?
“Champion jockey is never going to happen,” he says. “I’m 5 foot 11 inches, so I can’t ride the lightweights. Nine stone (126 lbs) is my minimum, so to win the Derby was big. I’m not the type of guy to get a big head or anything. I just carry on. But, when I got home that evening, there were a lot of people there waiting for me and everyone seemed to have a good time. It was a great day, never to be forgotten.
I said it must have felt nice waking up the next morning. “Not really. I had a headache!”
Sadly, Maurice Kirby died suddenly eight years ago. He missed most of Adam’s career, and his grandchildren. “It was very sad. He missed all of it really, my big successes, but he is always with me in my heart.”