Jumping for joy

Widely acclaimed as the most gifted jump jockey around, the Irishman from a famous racing family has a great chance of adding to his 1999 National win with the fancied Dun Doire

For most of the jockeys taking part, the few seconds on Saturday before the starter waves his flag and the 2007 Grand National begins are among the most tense of their careers. The Cheltenham Gold Cup might have more prestige and the Queen Mother Champion Chase offers more of a test of speed and skill, but the Grand National remains the most terrifying of National Hunt races, a four-and-a-half-mile slog over 30 of the most testing fences in the world. Small wonder then that many of those taking part cannot help but feel an unaccustomed lurch in their stomachs. Even champion jockey Tony McCoy, a man known for his stubborn determination to push his body to its limits, has admitted: 'You can never be too confident at Aintree.'

Most jockeys, but not all. Because, for one man, Aintree is the place where he feels most at home. Say to Paul Carberry that it must be just a little short of terrifying to face The Chair or Becher's Brook and he is likely to half-smother a disbelieving laugh before mentioning the time he jumped bigger, across country, in the dark. From anyone else that might sound like empty bravado, the sort of bluster you hear at closing time in pubs throughout Ireland, but for Carberry, who first raced over the Aintree fences as a 16-year-old and won the Grand National on Bobbyjo in 1999 at the age of 25, it is a statement of fact. Steeplechasing, over the biggest fences imaginable and at any time of night or day, is his passion.

'It's true, yeah the bigger the fence the more I enjoy it,' he admits. 'It's hard to explain what it's like racing at Aintree. There's nothing as good. The moment you come up to the fence and you get this feeling...' He breaks off and shakes his head: 'I can't explain. It's like nothing else, nothing at all.'

That he should willingly embrace a race others fear comes as little surprise to those who know Carberry. For the 33-year-old has long had a reputation as the wild boy of racing. He infamously celebrated his National win by swinging from the rafters near the winner's enclosure and announcing that he intended to spend the evening drinking the bars of Liverpool dry. In the eight years since that memorable win there have been few signs that Carberry has been intent on calming down. Rumours abound of his lengthy nights out and his love of a good time. When asked about it now, he shrugs, grins and says simply: 'I like to enjoy myself.'

Yet reputations can be deceptive and the Carberry who opens the door to his new house in Rathoath, County Meath, appears altogether calmer and more thoughtful than the joker with the low concentration span of reputation. True, he is hampered, in part, by his foot in plaster (the injury, which led him to miss March's Cheltenham Festival, was caused, he says, when a horse stepped on him; Cheltenham, however, was rife with more exuberant rumours), but there is also a sense that he is more focused, less restless these days. The house, which he has moved into with Rachel, his girlfriend of a year, helps. They are not completely unpacked yet and the living room is littered with Carberry's trophies and other bits of racing memorabilia. The DVDs, too, are in the main horse-related, as are the books. Pride of place on one wall has been given to a framed racecard celebrating that Grand National victory.

'It's my favourite moment,' he says. 'Nothing has ever come close to that day. There's no other race like it.' What of Cheltenham? After all, the Gold Cup is considered National Hunt racing's peak. Carberry shrugs. 'I like Cheltenham, but it's not Aintree, the buzz you get from racing there, there's nothing like it. The one thing I really want to do is win another National.'

This year he might get that opportunity when he partners Dun Doire, who is jostling for pre-race favouritism with Point Barrow, the horse ridden by his younger brother Philip. 'I'd say we have a good chance,' he says, reaching over to grab a stick and scratch his foot under the plaster. 'He's a good, solid horse and he certainly has the ability to get round.'

If he does win, it will be a high point after what has been, by and large, a miserable couple of years professionally. Last year, he was lucky to escape prison after setting fire to a newspaper on board a flight to Dublin in October 2005. Initially sentenced to two months, Carberry appealed and the sentence was reduced to community service. Asked about it he becomes bashful for the only time, visibly squirming before trying for a little-boy-lost grin and a shrug of the shoulders. 'It shouldn't have happened, I wasn't thinking,' he says, before adding: 'I found the jail sentence a bit harsh, but the community service is about right.'

At the time, he came in for more criticism than he is perhaps used to, for there is a sense that Carberry's good nature and easy-going attitude has ensured that he has largely been indulged rather than condemned. The general perception has always been that his more ill-thought-out actions tend to harm himself more than anyone else. He has a reputation as an obsessive and fearless hunter - 'Being out on a good day's hunting is like having a ride in the National,' he says - and some of his more esoteric injuries have come when he has been whipping-in with the hunt. In 2006 he almost missed Cheltenham after injuring himself trying to jump a five-bar gate while an earlier hunting-related run-in saw him gored in the stomach by a stag. Added to that have been the varying racing related injuries including a ruptured spleen, a broken leg and chipped vertebrae. 'It has been frustrating having so many injuries,' he says. 'You miss races and you think I should have been there, but then again you can't dwell on them. You have to accept that they happen.'

Yet wasn't it frustrating spending this year's Cheltenham Festival sitting on his couch with his foot in plaster and watching as his younger brother Philip and sister, Nina, grabbed the plaudits that once seemed his due. 'It wasn't great,' he says. 'I missed being there and you do feel left out especially when the horses you were going to ride are racing.'

And, he doesn't add, when those horses don't do well. Carberry's biggest ride of the festival was to have been Aran Concerto, Noel Meade's hot favourite for the Ballymore Novices Hurdle who never travelled well and finished fifth under McCoy.

What of his siblings? Did he feel jealous when he watched Philip expertly steer 16-1 shot Sublimity to a surprise victory in the Champion Hurdle or Nina win the Cross Country Chase on Heads On The Ground, riding with the sort of brio that was once the preserve of her elder brother? Carberry shakes his head. 'Nah, I was cheering for them to win,' he says. 'You want to be there, you want to be riding, but we're a close family, we all support each other.'

Small wonder that they do, for the Carberry family are the closest thing Ireland has to racing royalty. There are five Carberry siblings, in addition to Paul, Philip and Nina. Oldest brother Thomas also works in racing while third brother Mark, clearly the family rebel, is a carpenter. Their father, Tommy, won the Gold Cup three times and the Grand National once, securing a rare Gold Cup/National double with Ten Up and L'Escargot in 1975. Dan Moore, their grandfather, was the formidable trainer of L'Escargot, grandmother Joan Moore was the first woman to manage Punchestown racecourse and uncle Arthur Moore runs one of Ireland's best-regarded yards. Paul first sat on a horse at three years old, remembers following his mother on the hunt aged four and polished his infamously motionless style competing in point-to-points. He obtained his jockey's licence at 16 when he raced as a Flat jockey for trainer Jim Bolger. Carberry did well in that first year but admits he swiftly realised that the Flat wasn't for him. 'I never really enjoyed it,' he admits. 'It just doesn't compare to jumping. The excitement's just not there.'

It is that quest for excitement, that endless search for bigger, better thrills, that has defined Carberry's career. Not for him the obsessive nature of a McCoy or even Ruby Walsh's dedication to building a successful career on both sides of the water; instead Carberry's career could be described, at best, as erratic and, at worst, wasteful. There have been some memorable victories. Not just that National win, but a century of winners in Ireland in 2002 and a dominant performance at the 2003 Leopardstown Christmas festival.

Yet there have also been some equally memorable defeats, most notably the 2005 Champion Hurdle when he was strongly criticised for his ride on the highly fancied Harchibald. Following that race, Carberry was accused of being all style and no substance, with one critic referring to him and the horse as a pair of 'glorious peacocks'.

'You learn not to take any notice of that sort of thing,' he says, laughing. 'I don't think anyone could have given that horse a better race. He hates being in front and you have to ride him in a certain way because of that.'

Yet if punters and pundits have occasionally been dismissive of Carberry, his contemporaries take the opposite view. Veteran jockey Conor O'Dwyer once described him as 'the greatest natural talent' he had seen and in 2004 on a pre-Cheltenham TV programme McCoy, Walsh and Barry Geraghty were asked who was the best jockey of them all. Without hesitation they all said: 'Paul Carberry.'

Yet is it that very talent, the fact that alone among his contemporaries he can make riding a horse over fences look effortless, that has hampered his career? He admits he can't describe why he is so relaxed on a horse, 'because it's always come naturally to me'. Yet if riding came less easily to Paul Carberry, would he have had more success? 'I don't think you can say that. The thing is that I love racing but not at the expense of everything. I like to have a life as well.'

What is certain, however, is that he has never ridden for love of money or the desire for fame. Ask Carberry when he is most comfortable and for a moment a reckless look comes into his eye, the sort of look you imagine him having once given his siblings when challenging them to follow him, to jump where he dared, no matter how high. 'On a horse, jumping over fences. The higher the better, that's when it's the best. I don't ride for the money or the winners, I ride because I love it. Even if I don't race any more I'll always ride. I could never give it up.'