It’s Comply Or Die for Timmy Murphy in Grand National
Life can be about tough choices. The latest for Timmy Murphy was whether to ride The Package or Comply Or Die in the John Smith's Grand National at Aintree on Saturday.
Both are trained by David Pipe, owned by David Johnson – to whom Murphy rides as retained jockey - and both have compelling cases for the chances in the National. The Package has improved throughout the season and was an eye-catching second at the Cheltenham Festival last month while Murphy rode Comply Or Die to win the National in 2008 and then beat all bar Mon Mome in the race 12 months ago.
After days of agonising Murphy chose to stay loyal to Comply Or Die meaning that Graham Lee, who won the 2004 National on Amberleigh House, will ride The Package. “Timmy Murphy will ride Comply Or Die,” Johnson explained. “I've just been speaking to him and I told him it's make your mind up time, so he's decided to stay with Comply Or Die.
“It doesn't surprise me as he's come first and second for the last two years and it's very hard to get off that. I think they've both got big chances, but it's a very tough race and every horse in the race has a chance.”
If Murphy has made the wrong choice and passed over the winning ride to another jockey, as Aidan Coleman did with Mon Mome last year, he may regret it. But there have been far more tumultuous parts to his life for loss of one race, even the most famous of them all, to haunt him for long. This is a man who has stood on the brink of oblivion, looked over the edge and then came back to some of his greatest moments. Most of us will admit to times when alcohol has been a welcome acquaintance. It listens to our troubles and washes away the problems of the day in a gentle haze.
However, when the one-night stand gives way to a long-term relationship the divorce, either from the drink or normal life, can only be painful. Murphy has seen the highs, the lows and the four walls of a prison cell that gave an added edge to his autobiography. Riding The Storm may not have been the most original title for a book but it succinctly encapsulated the life and sometimes-grim times of Murphy.
If writing about his life was easy then living it at times was a polar opposite. The most compelling part of his story revolved around how a drinking binge drove him to commit an act of indecent assault on a flight from Tokyo to Heathrow in April 2002 and how Murphy then found the drive to claim back his life, his self-worth and his career. This is worth repeating, not to rake over the past, but to remind us all just how rough a road that Murphy has travelled to reach this point.
In one passage he recounts his feelings as he stood in the dock of Isleworth Crown Court listening to the judge as he delivered the six-month sentence after Murphy had been convicted of being drunk on an aircraft and indecently assaulting a member of the cabin crew.
Murphy had already faced up to his first trial; it was taking a long look in the mirror and realising that he did not like what he saw and that it was not the real man. “He was hiding behind a glass of beer,” Murphy explained, “trying to be somebody else and not who he was”.
The book did not make an attempt to portray Murphy in a favourable light but one that shined on the whole story. Long before he came face-to-face with a High Court judge Murphy had been in the stewards’ room so many times he was almost being invited to the Christmas parties. In one season he accumulated almost as many days’ suspension for whip offences as he did winners.
Now he is regarded as one of the most sympathetic riders in the weighing room, one who can coax a positive performance out of horses, and his ride on Comply Or Die in the National was a master class in how to ride the National, leaving Murphy to say: “He probably didn’t travel as well as last year but he has given me everything - except about 12 lengths.”
Perhaps Murphy can be forgiven for smiling now that some grandstand jockeys think he spends too much time riding at the back of the field to make a quiet run through the field but there are regrets about some of what he did. “At the time I didn’t have any but now, looking back, I think there was no need for it. I was just going on instinct and not thinking it through. Now it’s gone the other way some people say I’m not hard enough on them,” he said, adding ruefully “it’s a funny old game.”
Comply Or Die has only been seen twice since last year’s National, finishing down the field in a handicap hurdle at Cheltenham in November and 13th in the William Hill Handicap Chase the Festival three weeks ago, when Murphy was a head second on The Package.
Whether the jockey has let his heart rule his head is open to debate but Comply Or Die looks like a horse who becomes transformed at Aintree and Murphy knows a thing or two about how much life can change.
Either way, it’s his choice.
Timmy Murphy’s Grand National record: 1997 Dakyns Boy (8th); 1998 Court Melody (fell 6th); 1999 Tamarindo (fell 6th); 2000 Flaked Oats (fell 20th); 2001 Smarty (2nd); 2002 Davids Lad (Unseated rider 20th); 2003 Torduff Express (unseated rider 27th); 2004 Davids Lad (11th); 2005 It Takes Time (4th); 2006 It Takes Time (pulled before 29th); 2007 Celtic Son (pulled up before 22nd); 2008 COMPLY OR DIE (1st); 2009 Comply Or Die (2nd).
Tags: