After retiring from racing, jockey Nina Carberry found herself in limbo. She tells Donal O’Donoghue how Dancing with the stars changed everything and why motherhood means so much to her.
“Dancing with the stars opened up new opportunities for me, but it also opened up another side to me.” Nina Carberry, the former champion jockey who forged a new career as a TV star sips her green tea and reels From winning DWTS last March to becoming the new coach of Ireland’s fittest familythe 38-year-old has found a niche while revealing new sides to her public persona.
“I realized life wasn’t all about horses,” she adds (she still has her own business, Nina Carberry Racing). “I also found my voice to scream,” she says of the impending TV series pitting her against fellow trainers Davy Fitz, Donncha O’Callaghan and Anna Geary. “I thought I was going to be the quietest but it definitely wasn’t.”
After retiring from racing in 2018 at the age of 33, Nina Carberry was lost for a while. “I missed it a lot at first,” she says. “There was a big hole in my life and I didn’t really know where I was going. Obviously I was also trying to keep my own business of buying and selling horses going, but the buzz of the horseback riding had disappeared from my From the age of 15, I was used to horse racing and now I had trouble finding my way around. Dancing with the stars happened and it gave me a new breath of life, a new purpose. Here is something to fight for again. I’m very competitive and I didn’t really realize that until DWTS.”
We meet at a cafe not far from Carberry’s home in Ashbourne, Co. Meath, where she lives with her husband, Ted Walsh Jnr, and their two children, Rosie (6) and Holly (3). Nina looks casually glamorous, much like the other well-heeled diners, but her firm handshake suggests the grafter below.
She’s also surprisingly shy, which makes her exploits in a ruthless sport, male-dominated for so long, all the more impressive. And here it is now, reinvented. So what prompted her to participate in DWTS? “My agent told me that I would only have to do 12 hours of training in total,” she laughs. “So I thought I’d see the girls every night. Ted was like, ‘Sure, why don’t you? You’re gonna be awesome.”
Sure, Nina was far better than grand, but the reality was far from the original terrain: hours of grueling practice, late nights away from family, and Sunday nights staring into the crosshairs of prime time and the audience. “I think everyone expected me to be pretty rigid because that’s how they see you as a jockey,” she says. “Also, because I’m quite a shy person, a lot of my friends were like, ‘What are you doing?’ Plus, I had two left feet. But when they saw me, they were like, ‘Ah, you’re not that bad.'”
Despite what she says, that competitive streak has always been there; just had to turn it back on. “You’re totally there to win as a jockey,” she says of race day. “Then you come back and are friends with the people around you again.”
After signing with a win at the 2018 Punchestown Festival, Carberry found herself in limbo. “Running was my life and now I miss it,” she says. Did she come down? “Oh yeah. I was trying to find my way back and at that point my business wasn’t set up properly. I was ready to retire because I had Rosie and she was my priority but when the business isn’t going as well as you want it to, you definitely panic.
“It was hard to bear and I think it’s something that needs to be looked at more, to help sports people come to terms with life after retirement. You’ve been in a high adrenaline sport for so long and when you take your retirement, you really miss it and get very depressed. I really suffered with that.
At that time, she was also the mother of Rosie, born in May 2017. What did that give her? “It gave me everything. Everything I worked for had to be for her and that’s how I see it now. Everything I do is for my daughters and to do my best.” Being a mother was something she always wanted.
“I would have been devastated if someone had told me I couldn’t have children. It was something I didn’t want to leave too late in life either, still in the back of my mind. and I was worried about it I would I’ve regretted my whole life if I didn’t take the time to have kids It’s a miracle and I know I’m lucky to have two healthy children because many people are not so lucky.
In July 2017, shortly after Rosie’s arrival, Nina’s father, legendary jockey Tommy Carberry, died. “Dad had dementia and suffered a bit towards the end, but at least now I can tell Rosie she was able to hold his hand before he died. She’s visiting his grave now, saying a few prayers. That helps keep Tommy’s memory alive. and Rosie will get to know her grandfather as she grows up. It will be nice to tell him what a legend he was.
Tommy Carberry had a quiet but telling influence on his daughter’s career. Best advice? “Make sure you only win one race. Dad never said much but was always there when you needed him. So were my older brothers Paul and Philip (both champion jockeys).”
In an illustrious career – first female jockey to win a Grade One, second female winner of the Irish Grand National – Nina Carberry never considered herself a trailblazer. “That’s what everyone says about me but I’ve never seen it like that,” she explains. “I was just competing and going out to win every race. But now when I look back I’m very proud that people see it that way and that the sport has come so far.” She says she has never experienced sexism in sport but admits it is still there. “Rachael (Blackmore) says she never gets it, but at first she also didn’t have any opportunities outside of women’s racing.”
Growing up with five brothers toughened Nina Carberry. “It made me tougher and probably made me a bit of a tomboy. So when I got into the male-dominated sport, I was never intimidated by that.” Has there ever been sexism? “There are still some I believe, but I have to say how it was from my experience and because I had my brothers in the weigh room I was never going to have any worries. They were always going to defending. Also, I was able to fight my own turn on the track and that upbringing helped me. If I had a problem with someone, I would tackle it head-on and deal with it on the spot.
She was injury free when she retired. “I was eliminated in the last race and all I wanted to do was win it,” she said. Like any elite athlete, she couldn’t leave the fear of injury in her head. Yet the possibility was always there and we briefly talk about the recent tragedy of 13-year-old jockey Jack of Bromhead.
“So sad. You can’t escape the dangers of sport and that’s the reality.” What about his own daughters getting into racing? “I’ll never tell them no. I’m sure my mum, Pamela, was the same. She probably didn’t want me to, but horse racing was all I wanted to do. Mum was never going to m stop and I will never stop the girls, even if I wish they were doing something else.”
Nina Carberry still watches the races on TV, but she now has her own TV territory. When we spoke, she had just buckled up Ireland’s fittest family (she won the 2020 celebrity version of the show with the Walsh family) and she expects that when DWTS returns early next year, she can make an appearance as the reigning champion. So where does Nina keep her DWTS trophy? “Along with my other tracks,” she says. “It’s tiny but it was kinda crazy.”
I imagine it was so much more than that, the push she needed to find herself and for others to see her again too.
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