Keith Donoghue
Pardubice is a small city in the Czech Republic, about 100 kilometres east of Prague. Fewer than 100,000 people live in Pardubice, the ninth largest city in the Czech Republic, a city built on the river Elbe with a history that stretches back to medieval times and known for its gingerbread. It is also known for the Velká pardubická, a horse race that is run every year on the second Sunday in October, one of the most challenging horse races staged annually anywhere in the world.
They race over four and a quarter miles in the Velká pardubická and they jump 31 fences. They race on grass and they race through ploughed fields, they turn to the right and they turn to the left, and they jump banks and poles and walls and ditches and the famous and fearsome Taxis, which they jump just once in the race, and only in the Velká pardubická, so just once in the year.
Before last weekend, no horse trained in Ireland had ever won the Velká pardubická. Charlie Mann trained and rode It’s A Snip to win the race for Britain in 1995, and the Enda Bolger-trained Risk Of Thunder went close in 1999 under Ken Whelan, finished second behind Velká pardubická perennial Peruán, who was winning the second of his three. They have been running the race since 1874, and no Irish-trained horse had ever won it.
The Gordon Elliott-trained Coko Beach was travelling well for Keith Donoghue when he unseated at the fourth last fence last year.
“I was gutted,” says Keith Donoghue now. “I know that it was still a long way from home, you don’t know how the race would have panned out from there, but he was travelling so well. The whole year, it was eating at me.”
Keith Donoghue knew about the Velká pardubická since his childhood days. He saw the races, he watched the videos and he thought, imagine riding in the race, imagine winning the race. Because the Velká pardubická was made for Keith Donoghue. His formative years spent hunting with the Ward Union in County Meath, his skills honed, it was the variety of the obstacles that attracted him, the different challenges that the race presented.
You will travel a long way to find a better exponent of horsemanship skills. Remarkably, Keith Donoghue has won five of the last seven renewals of the Cross-Country Chase at the Cheltenham Festival, and that is not a coincidence.
Donoghue rode Stumptown in a cross-country chase for the first time last November, over Punchestown’s banks and ditches, and he was dynamite. Immediately the rider started thinking about the Velká pardubická. Together, he and trainer Gavin Cromwell hatched a plan.
“Gavin is great like that,” says the rider. “He’ll discuss options with me and with Troy Cullen, who does a lot of the race planning, and come up with a plan. So Sunday was about 11 months in the planning.”
There were races to be won in the interim, mind you. There was the Cross-Country Chase at Cheltenham’s December meeting, Stumptown delivered with Tag Heuer precision by Donoghue to get up and win by a cosy length. And there was the Cross-Country Chase back at Cheltenham in March, which they also won, which brought up Donoghue’s fifth win in the race in the last seven renewals. After the Grand National at Aintree in April, in which nothing went right and in which Stumptown was ultimately pulled up, it was sights trained on the Czech Republic in October.
The fact that the rider had been there before was a help. Nothing major, but just in terms of where to go, what to do. Back on familiar terrain. Last year, he went in and out in the same day. This year, he had four rides on Fairyhouse on Saturday, he won on the fourth of them, Clonbury Bridge in the three-mile handicap chase, then he headed to Dublin Airport – 25 minutes from Fairyhouse – and got his flight to Prague. Stayed in Prague on Saturday night, headed east on Sunday morning.
“It was good to get to Pardubice early on Sunday morning,” he says. “There were six races, all cross-country, and we were the last race. I jogged around the track beforehand, followed the map. It’s a bit trickier than the cross-country tracks at Cheltenham or at Punchestown, and it was a bit like a maze to me last year, but this year, I knew where I was going. It was a bit different to last year too. They have As and Bs and sometimes Cs at the fences. 10A, 10B. Last year we jumped 27A, for example. This year we jumped 27B.”
The fourth fence is the Taxis, and the first three fences build up to it. Donoghue had his position on the run up to it, sixth or seventh, towards the outside, plenty of light. Stumptown was a little bit long at the obstacle so he asked him for a big one. His horse picked up well, and he just got there, just made it to the far side of the ditch. But he pitched on landing and shot his rider up into the air.
“It all happened so quickly,” he says. “I didn’t have time to think that I was gone. I was relieved though when I came back down and he was there, still underneath me.”
He lost his good position, but only temporarily. The obstacle after the Taxis is a big bank, the Irish Bank, they call it. It could be Ruby’s Double, in front of the stands at Punchestown. Stumptown skipped over the obstacle, two strides where his rivals took three or four, and he was back in his rhythm again.
He lost it again at the double though, the double at which Risk Of Thunder had refused in 1998. His momentum checked by Cavalry Master in front of him, he jumped the second part of the obstacle slowly and emerged from it in 13th place, last of the remaining contenders.
“Stumptown this year was so different to Coko Beach last year,” says Keith. “Last year, everything went brilliantly. Then he made one mistake at the fourth last fence, and I fell off him. This year, so much went wrong. My saddle slipped too. And still, about four out, I thought that we would win. I always knew that he’d stay.”
They did win. Donoghue asked Stumptown for his effort as they rounded the home turn on the outside of the leader High In The Sky, ridden by Jan Faltejsek, who once won a Cleeve Hurdle at Cheltenham on Knockara Beau and who was bidding for a record-equalling eighth victory in the Velká pardubická. Stumptown jumped the final obstacle in second place, about a length and a half behind the leader, then stayed on powerfully up the run-in to get up and win by almost two lengths.
“It was some feeling, crossing the winning line. It was up there with any of the big races that I have won. That’s probably because of the race that it is, and the way that we won it, so much going wrong. And it was brilliant afterwards, the reception that we got.”
National Hunt jockeys rarely get to ply their trade very far beyond the borders of Ireland and Britain. Maybe France. This was beyond even that, this was an Irish win on a truly international stage.
“They played the National Anthem afterwards, and that was special,” he says. “I had never experienced that before. We had the time to get to appreciate it all too. The race was at 3.30pm, and I didn’t get back into the weigh room until about ten past five.”
Yesterday evening, Keith Donoghue was in Far Hills, about an hour outside New York, riding Ballysax Hank in the American Grand National Hurdle Stakes. This afternoon, he will be in Limerick, riding Yeah Man in the Munster National.
Back on familiar terrain.
© The Sunday Times, 19th October 2025
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