My name is Martin Kelly and I have attended RACE for four months.  I came here to this apprentice jockey school with the hope in making it in the horse racing industry as a jockey.  To get into RACE, I had to attend a weeks trial at the end of July.  Anyone who wants to apply for trials, must fill out an application form and send it to RACE, Dublin Road, Kildare.  Only ninety people will be accepted on the trials. They will be split into three groups, taking on thirty people at a time.

During the one weeks trial the instructors: Niall Byrne, Paul Keating and Barry Walsh will get to know you and judge you on your personality and how well you take orders.

At the start of August, the ninety people who attended the trials will be posted information letting them know whether or not they have been accepted in RACE.  Only thirty two people will get accepted onto the ten month long course.  They will start in mid-August.  During the course the instructors will teach you the basic handling of the horse and get you riding properly so that when you are sent out to a trainer you will at least know the basics of riding and handling.

All of the handling of the horses is done during the morning from 7:00 am until 12:30 pm.  We have an early start at 6:30 am to get dressed and up for breakfast.  At 1:00 pm we go up to the canteen where we get served our dinner.  At 2:00 pm we have classes.  We study Maths, Information Technology, French, Communications, Personal Effectiveness and Racehorse Care and Exercise.  If we do well in our exams in these subjects, at the end of the year we will get our FETAC Level 1 certificate.  We have three classes a day and each one is fifty minutes long.  We have a ten minute break between each one and finish at 5:00 pm.  We then go up to the canteen for tea.

After that we get time to ourselves until 7:00 pm.  At 7:00pm we have one more class for an hour and a half.  It would either be Art, PE or Simulator Training.  We go back up to the canteen at 9:00 pm and are in bed by 10:00 pm.