SUNDAY, December 12th, 2004. Eighteen-year-old Niall ‘Slippers’ Madden is sitting in his home in Navan waiting for time to tick by until he can make the short drive out to Navan racecourse to take up a fancied ride in the bumper, when he receives a phone call.

It’s Martin Brassil and he’s looking for a rider for his horse in the first, one with a right chance. The mount had come available late in the morning and with few options, the trainer turned to Madden, who he knew lived closed by.

“I was based with Noel Meade at the time,” Madden says, reflecting back. “Dad would have been friends with Martin so I knew him long before I started riding. We’d often meet him down at the Curragh and he’d ask me to sit up on one for a piece of work.

“On this occasion it was a case of being at the right place at the right time. That was the start of my association with Numbersix’.”

Numbersixvalverde, named after his Co Clare-born owner Bernard Carroll’s house in Portugal, bolted up that day at Navan and just under two months later, Madden combined with the nine-year-old again to win the Thyestes Chase by a short-head.

To this day he remains the only amateur rider with a win in that esteemed handicap chase. It wasn’t enough to keep him on the horse for his Irish Grand National win later that season, with Ruby Walsh deputising, but Madden understood. He was still an amateur, and he knew that was the way things went in racing.

It would be the following season before he’d ride Numbersixvalverde again, but now the partnership was more regular. The pair finished fourth in a handicap hurdle at Naas and when Madden got off the horse, Brassil asked him if he’d like to ride him in the Grand National. He said what any 20-year-old just-turned professional jumps jockey would say, that he’d be absolutely thrilled, and the excitement began.

Numbersixvalverde and Madden jump to the front in the National from Hedgehunter and Ruby Walsh (far) and Clan Royal and Tony McCoy \ Healy Racing

“I remember the morning, myself and dad got off the plane and it was pouring out of the heavens in Liverpool. We were delighted. We knew slow ground would help Numbersix’,” Madden recalls.

“I went and walked the track with dad. He gave me full confidence all the way round, told me the horse jumps great and where to be through the race. He told me turning in that if I was 10 lengths off the leader that I’d be hard to beat because the horse stays so well.

“When I got to the Melling Road, I was upsides the leaders. I didn’t have any lengths to make up.”

Madden and Numbersixvalverde strode on for a famous victory. After the line Davy Russell rode up to him and punched him on the leg.

“Do you know what you’ve just done?”

“Of course I didn’t really know what I’d done,” he asserts now. “Don’t get me wrong I was after winning the Grand National. As far as I’m concerned, it’s the race every jump jockey wants to win, the race everybody knows about. Everyone stops and watches the National. I knew we were after winning but it did take a while to sink in properly.

“I was back sitting in the weighroom and I was given a case of champagne. Someone said to me ‘You won’t realise what you’re after doing until you ride in this race for another three or four years.’ I was just like ‘yeah, yeah…’ It went straight over my head. I know what they meant now.

“I hadn’t actually met dad yet and up until then I managed to keep the emotions together, just waving my stick on the way in and that sort of thing. I came down the steps for the presentation and saw dad at the bottom.

“The two of us wrapped our arms around each other and he just said: ‘Well done son, you did it. I’m very proud of you.’

“And then the taps turned on.”

*********

Five days after he called time on his career at Punchestown, the course where it all began for him, Niall Madden is relaxed and content, reflecting back over a career that began in November 2001 and finished on the last day of 2020.

Bred in the purple, Slippers hails from a truly class Irish racing family. A son of Boots and Patricia Madden, the former a multiple Cheltenham Festival-winning rider, the latter a very accomplished rider herself and daughter of the legendary Toss Taaffe, Slippers was made for racing.

Yet when he was young, Boots will tell you that all he wanted was soccer. He played for the local club Rathcoole and he only gave up that vocation at under-14 level when racing took hold. He remembers the manager and a few players coming down and pleading with him to come back. But in truth, it was always going to be racing.

“The amount of contacts and people you meet that you probably wouldn’t have met if you were doing something else. I made an awful lot of friends, lifelong friends.

By his own admission he was a bit slow getting his riding career started. He was late into pony racing, which meant he wasn’t sharp enough against the guys who has been on the circuits since they were seven of eight. That trend continued in the very early part of his riding career when it just took a while for things to fall right.

It happened in July 2002, when he rode family horse Teknash to win at Wexford and then he was away and running. Riding for Noel Meade at the time, he was champion amateur the following season with 39 winners, miles clear of the next best.

Big wins

Big wins then came thick and fast early in his career – the Thyestes on Numbersix’, the Galway Hurdle on More Rainbows for Meade at 33/1, and of course, the Grand National at the age of 20.

In the same year as his Aintree heroics, he recorded his first Grade 1 win on Jazz Messenger for Noel Meade in the Christmas Hurdle. He came back to Leopardstown the following day and recorded his second, Nickname for Martin Brassil in the Paddy Power Dial-A-Bet Chase.

Yet you ask Madden to recount the best things of his career, and he’d rather point to the people he’s met along the way first.

“Racing is an unbelievable industry to work in,” he says. “The amount of contacts and people you meet that you probably wouldn’t have met if you were doing something else. I made an awful lot of friends, lifelong friends.

“Day to day, the weighroom is what I’ll miss the most, the guys I’ve been with for the last 20 years. They’re family. Most of the lads in there would be best friends, even when we’re not racing, we’re hanging out together. The valets as well – Dave Fox and his two sons Paul and Robert, and Aido and Nuggie, who retired recently. They do unreal work and it often gets passed over.

“They say the best days of your career are the early stages. I’d definitely say that was the case for me at Meade’s. There were loads of guys with licences there when I started – MJ Doran, Jason McKeown, Luke McNiff, Paddy Stringer, Darragh Burke. Paul and Nina Carberry as well. It was a great place to be.”

When Madden won the National at just 20, he was the same age as Ruby Walsh when he won on Papillon in 2000 and the fifth Irish-based jockey in his 20s to win the race in eight years (pictured, top right).

The world was his oyster at that stage but as it transpired his quick second Grade 1 win later that year will remain his last. However he says has absolutely no regrets on how his career fared.

“Sure, you’re always striving for that Grade 1 or that number-one job. Do you think that you should have scored more goals? Sure you always do. Obviously we all want to ride Grade 1 winners and I’m delighted I rode two. I was placed in plenty of others but it just didn’t click and that’s the way the game goes you know?

“The second half of my career slowed down a bit. I suppose an awful lot of people I was riding for, their numbers went down. I wasn’t the first jockey anywhere. It’s no one’s fault or anything. I had a few injuries then as well and when you’re in this game you get forgotten about very easy.

“But I have no regrets. I thought I had a great career. The competition element in Ireland was always something I liked. Competition makes you better than you are and makes you fight for everything. Without competition you wouldn’t be anywhere in life.”

While his winners dipped, Madden still remained a go-to man for big races, often in the green and gold silks of J.P. McManus, right up to this Christmas when his final winning ride came on Philip Dempsey’s The Long Mile in the Tim Duggan Memorial Chase at Limerick.

“J.P. was always very good to me and dad,” he says. “I can’t thank him enough for that and my condolences go to him, his son John and their family’s tragic loss over Christmas.”

Stint

In recent seasons Madden rode 35 winners in Britain during a stint with Harry Fry, a spell he enjoyed immensely before returning home.

All throughout his career he had his father in his corner. If Boots didn’t see his son’s races live, he had them taped to watch later and he’d always be on the phone straight after.

“He’s always been there whether it’s because I’ve done something wrong or something good,” Madden explains. “If you’re riding a horse and you have an idea of doing something, he was always someone to talk it over with because he’s obviously watching all your races and he knows the horses as well as you do. It’s nice to have someone whose been there and done it.

“Ruby had Ted and Paul had Tommy but not every jockey has that. I was delighted to have that. Now don’t get me wrong, it didn’t always go down well. You come in after a race and realise you gave your horse a bad ride and you’re on the way home and he’s ringing you going ‘Well what did you do that for?’ and you’re going ‘Ah I know, I know…’ But he always meant well.

“I had grandad as well. He was always there from the word go and he was always great for everything. Grandad was great at race reading. He’d put a different view on it than dad would. It was great to have two different aspects of what was happening and what would happen.”

Socks

With Slippers joining Boots on the sidelines, all attention will be on Socks, Madden’s younger brother Tom, who has established his name as a flat jockey.

Many would say the shape of the jumps game has changed considerably since Madden began riding at the start of the millennium, with the concentration of power diluting into a few small centres. Does that make it harder for aspiring jumps jockeys coming through?

“I wouldn’t say it’s any harder, I’d say it’s pretty much the same,” Madden replies. “There’s an awful lot of good jockeys in the country, as there was when I started. It’s the same in every way of life, there’s always going to be competition and it’s always tough.

“Of course it’s a massive help to be in one of those big yards to get yourself going but if you’re in those yards you’re always a long way down the list of jockeys there anyway. If you go into Willie’s as a 7lb claimer, you have Paul Townend, Danny Mullins, David Mullins, Patrick Mullins all in front of you.

“I think wherever you are, if you’re a good rider and you work hard, you’ll get noticed. That proves year in year out. It might take you a little bit longer to get there but the cream always rises to the top.

“The flat game is a lot different. You just need to keep progressing every year and I think Tom is. This year was his first year without his claim. Jessie (Harrington) was very good to him, he rode an awful lot of good horses in good races for her.

“I thought he improved massively this year with his strength and style and even reading a race. He rode plenty of nice horses and horses that weren’t winning, were still running well for him. That’s what he needs to do – keep horses running well and keep his name in the paper. You need a bit of luck, the flat game is hard enough, but hopefully things will click for him and he’ll keep going.”

While Madden feels the situation for jockeys is more or less the same, working alongside his dad in the yard, he agrees that the smaller jumps trainer has it a lot more harder now.

“The current situation is very hard,” he says. “The bigger man is getting bigger and the smaller man is getting smaller. You can’t knock the good trainers for doing what they’re doing. They’re getting bigger because they’re so successful. You can’t knock anyone for that.

“It’s tough but you just need to grab the bull by the horns, keep the head down and just keep going. Hopefully he’ll come across a good one. It’s the same as everything. Good horses make good jockeys and trainers.”

Looking to the future, Madden says he has a few things he’d like to do, without mentioning anything specific. He still has plenty of skin in the game, with his dad and his brother, and his fiance Aine (O’Connor), who has progressed significnantly as a jockey in recent seasons and who he has been delighted to see doing so well.

He concludes: “There’s a few avenues I’d like to go down, things I couldn’t do when I was a jockey, and I’m open to job offers. I’ve been in racing for 20 years. I’m 35 now, and feel I’m young enough and my eyes are wide open so that I can start a career in something else and be very successful at that too.”