Legendary Irish rider Pat Smullen dies at 43

Legendary Irish rider Pat Smullen passed away tonight at age 43.

The nine-time Irish champion rider was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in March 2018 and passed away at Dublin’s St. Vincent Hospital on Tuesday after a relapse in recent months.

The Offaly native retired from racing in May 2019 and won a European classic 12 times, including victory in the Epsom Derby and Irish Derby aboard Harzand in 2016.

Smullen and the horse racing community raised over € 2.5 million for Cancer Trials Ireland during their battle with the disease.

Last September, the Pat Smullen Champions Race during the Longines Irish Champions Weekend culminated with legendary show jumper AP McCoy coming out of retirement to watch Ruby Walsh at the charity race at Curragh.

Speaking to Off The Ball last year, Smullen said: “I never really thought I was going to die. I just didn’t allow myself, if that was silly, I don’t know. Of course it’s going to happen to all of us one day. But right now I’m not ready, I never allowed myself to think that.

“Sometimes you get depressed, but it would be for half an hour or an hour and then he would kick me in the butt and say ‘keep going, keep going.’ When you see your kids, and a great wife … that’s how I handled it anyway, and I think it was very helpful to me.

“I just didn’t allow negativity to come in. There are some people who are very well-intentioned, but I didn’t like meeting them. They had good intentions, but their whole demeanor was ‘this is terrible.’ In fact, I tried to distance myself from that. I just wanted to all the positivity around me, and I think that’s very important.

“If I had one piece of advice for people, it would be that. There are so many things that happen every day in terms of testing and research, that I kept telling myself that they would come up with something and that this treatment will work. That was very important to me. This is how I handled it. ”