Nowadays, Timmy Murphy is known, exclusively, as a Flat jockey with a minimum riding weight of 8st 11lb, or thereabouts. However, readers may or may not be aware that prior to switching his attentions to the Flat in 2015, at the age of 40, Murphy was a highly successful, if sometimes controversial, National Hunt jockey. In fact, he rode his first winner, The Real Article, in a National Hunt Flat race at Punchestown in January, 1994. In the next 25 years or so, he racked up over 1,000 winners, including eight at the Cheltenham Festival and, of course, Comply Or Die in the 2008 Grand National.
In 2002, Murphy was sentenced to be detained for six months at Her Majesty’s pleasure after pleading guilty to indecent assault on an air stewardess and being drunk on an aircraft. Prior to his arrest, Murphy had ridden 98 winners, but having served 84 days in Wormwood Scrubs and given up drinking, he said, “I am definitely a better jockey for not drinking. A lot more goes through my head. Things are planned out more. I am more aware of things going on around.”
Nevertheless, Murphy hit the headlines for the wrong reasons again in November, 2013, when he was banned for nine days after a weighing room altercation with fellow jockey Dominic Elsworth. Murphy dislocated his shoulder during the fracas and, when he did so again in January, 2014, he was ruled out of race riding, pending shoulder surgery. In fact, he did not return to race riding until May, 2015, by which time he had already applied for, and obtained, a licence to ride on the Flat.
He rode his first winner in his new capacity, Houdini, in a 6-furlong sprint handicap at Wolverhampton in May, 2015. Winning trainer Jamie Osborne, a former weighing room colleague, said at the time, “It was great for Timmy. I rode with him and he’s always been a phenomenally good rider, a great horseman and jockey and very talented. And, watching the race, I think he didn’t look like he was having his third ride on the Flat.”