WHISPER it very quietly but Jack Kennedy is on track to win a first Irish jump jockey’s championship this season. The soft-spoken Kerryman currently leads five-in-a-row title seeking Paul Townend by 30 winners heading into the busy Christmas period.
It’s a huge lead and Paddy Power’s odds of 1-2 about Kennedy being crowned champion next spring are probably about right considering he has the power of Gordon Elliott’s stable behind him. He was as big as 12-1 at the start of the season to finish champion.
The reason that we’re whispering it is because 23-year-old Kennedy has been hit very hard by injuries in recent times, suffering some horrific falls that have seen him spend many months on the sidelines.
Even this season he broke his collarbone in a bizarre fall at Downpatrick in August, which saw him miss six weeks of the season and the Listowel Festival — not returning until early October.
He picked up the injury when he was brought down on the Elliott-trained Nonbinding in a chaotic incident in which eight of the 15 runners crashed out at the first — an event reminiscent of Foinavon’s 1967 Grand National.
To have ridden 70 winners already, despite this absence, is testament to Kennedy’s talents and he is now very much emerging as someone who will be at the top for the next decade.
Despite being still only in his early 20’s the Dingle man seems to have been around for a long time — having burst onto the scene as a 17-year-old at the Cheltenham Festival in 2017.
That win on the infamous Labaik catapulted him into the big time and he was quick to establish himself as one of the country’s top riders, despite being still a teenager.
It appeared to be all so easy, and the Grade 1 and big Festival winners came frequently, but every time Kennedy enjoyed a period of success he seemed to be floored by a big injury.
Surely the best or indeed worst example of this came at the Dublin Racing Festival in 2020.
Kennedy had just enjoyed one of the biggest moments of his career when winning the Irish Gold Cup on Delta Work when just 30 minutes later a seemingly-harmless unseat off Dallas Des Pictons saw him break his leg again.
But he fought back and returned nine months later to rebuild his career and with the help of his great mentor Elliott he is now enjoying the best run of his time as a professional.
His tally of 35 Grade 1 winners is astonishing considering his age and he’s miles clear in comparison to when the likes of AP McCoy and Ruby Walsh were that young.
He’s also won a Gold Cup on Minella Indo — one of ten Cheltenham Festival winners — impressive stats for a man born a few weeks after Istabraq won his second Champion Hurdle in 1999.
This year alone he partnered those 70 winners from 273 rides — a 26-per-cent strike rate and perhaps more tellingly a 55-per-cent strike on favourites. That tally already beats his best return of 68 wins in 2016/17 and there’s still another five months of the jumping season remaining.
He is also closing in on Townend’s winning haul of 84 wins from last season, needing just 15 more victories to eclipse it.
Kennedy has everything. He’s ice cool, tactically astute and strong in a finish and his ability to do weights as low as 10st1lbs gives him an edge too. His battle with Townend (below left) should make for enthralling viewing and the hope is that both stay injury free as the season progresses.
The five-time champion has also missed ten weeks of the season with thumb and shoulder injuries, which has impeded his momentum. He’s sure to make inroads on Kennedy in the second half of the season as Willie Mullins tends to be stronger in the spring but the gap might be big enough to keep Kennedy ahead.
Gordon Elliott has come agonisingly close to toppling the Mullins’ monopoly in the trainers’ title battle and he’s likely to provide Kennedy with as much ammunition as he needs in the closing weeks of the season.
Kennedy has so much more than a potential title win to look forward to in the coming months. His two Grade 1 winners at the recent Fairyhouse meeting — Teauphoo and Mighty Potter — look like strong contenders for Cheltenham, while other talented Elliott inmates like Queen’s Brook, Fury Road, Pied Piper and American Mike will be in the shake-up too.
Kennedy is in the unusual position of having an experienced ex-champion like Davy Russell as part of the same team at Elliott’s and that’s surely going to be a help to him in the coming months as they plot a path to break the Mullins/Townend domination.
Team Elliott is a closely-knit bunch — particularly in the aftermath of the scandal around the dead horse picture.
A Gold Cup is what every jockey dreams of and Kennedy has already one of those on his trophy cabinet but a jockey’s title would take him to the next level. A level he’s very much likely to stay at for many years.
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