“Of course, I’m sad to be giving up something I’ve been lucky enough to have called a job for so long,” Davy Russell said on Sunday as he brought down the curtain on one of the outstanding National Hunt riding careers. “But the truth is, I’ve never actually worked a day in my life.”

It was a typically modest way for Russell, 43, to take his leave of the weighing room, having left everything out on the track during a quarter of a century in the saddle. In all, he rode 58 Grade One winners, famously steered Tiger Roll to success in consecutive Grand Nationals and fought his way back to fitness after several serious injuries that might have persuaded many other riders that it was time to stop pushing their luck.

Russell’s announcement came after a hard-fought success on Gordon Elliott’s Liberty Dance at Thurles, which gave a final outing to his familiar victory celebration, his hands off the reins and pointing skywards like the bull-riding hero of 8 Seconds, a 1990s cowboy movie.

Before his retirement, Russell was the leading current jockey at the
Cheltenham Festival with 25 wins, behind only Ruby Walsh, Barry Geraghty and Tony McCoy, and while he did not quite match those outstanding riders from what was, undoubtedly, a golden age at the meeting, he always had a reputation for horsemanship to rival any jockey in the weighing room.

He finished as the leading rider at the Festival only once, when his four winners included a rare treble at the meeting on the third afternoon, but there were few more dependable jockeys in the handicaps at Cheltenham in March, when Russell’s 13 winners from less than 100 rides showed a level stakes profit of nearly 100 points.

Russell was a Gold Cup winner aboard Jim Culloty’s Many of Russell’s recent big-race wins, including Tiger Roll’s two wins at Aintree, came for Elliott and in the colours of Michael O’Leary’s Gigginstown Stud operation.

“The feedback he gave has always been invaluable,” Elliott said on Sunday. “He has been a big part of the team here at Cullentra for the last 10 or 12 years, and he is still going to be part of the team.

“He has been as much a friend as anything else. He could do things on horses that other people couldn’t. There was never anything wrong with the bottle. The body slowed down, but the bottle was 100pc and so it is very sad to see him go.

“He has brilliant hands and transmitted confidence to a horse, and you only have to look at what he has achieved to see what a great jockey he was.”

Russell will be delighted to retire on his own terms, having suffered a serious fall in the Munster National in October 2020 which many observers felt would force him to hang up his boots. Three fractured and dislocated vertebrae in his neck kept him away from the track for 11 months but his dedication saw him fight his way back and he added three more Grade One wins – including victories in both the Savills Chase and Irish Gold Cup at Leopardstown – to his record in the 2021-22 season.

“When I broke my neck I got a bit of a shock,” Russell said on Sunday. “People thought I was going to retire. If the injury stopped me, fine, but I was happy to do it on my own terms.

“It is testament to my family who never questioned my decisions, albeit how strange at the time they seemed. I didn’t decide until the day I was declared to ride a horse again that I was going to come back because it was hard work. The flex in my neck wasn’t working properly at the time, but I’m good now. I have aches and pains, but I’m not going to blame that, it is just time.”

Russell added: “I have five children and plenty of work to do. I’d love the romance of training, but to start back at zero at 43 years of age would be difficult. It would depend on if the kids wanted to ride in point-to-points or whatever in 10 years’ time that I might train a few point-to-pointers or whatever.

“I dreamed about [a successful career in the saddle] but never thought my dreams would come to fruition. I’ll never forget my first winner or forget my last, but it is hard to get away from Tiger Roll.”