Catching up with CopyBet brand ambassador, Johnny Burke
With the jumps racing season now underway, it promises to be a busy few months for jockey Johnny Burke. We caught up with the CopyBet brand ambassador to find out how his recent meets have gone and to get his assessment on the year so far.
It's been a steady couple of months. All the horses are ready to go but the grounds are just too quick at the moment. It's been a busy time riding out and I've spent a lot of time at Fergal O'Brien's yard but a bit like everyone else at the moment, we're kind of waiting for the rain to fall.
My highlight of the last few weeks would be kicking off the jumps season with a win on Frontier Prince at Chepstow. Every year you're looking at novice hurdlers and trying to establish if there are any young prospects coming through. So it was nice to see him go and win at Chepstow - it's always a good race for the future.
Yeah he was a good bumper horse. He's always shown a good level of ability and his form in the bumpers has backed it up. It was good to see him go and do that over hurdles the other day and hopefully he can have a strong career.
This time of the year tends to be the busiest for most jockeys and it's the same for me. I'll be busy riding out and racing. It can be a bit of a slog but when the clocks change it gets a bit easier as there's less riding out and you're fully focussed on the racing itself.
I'd like to think we've got a nice team in place to go to war with.
Yeah I suppose it's been good, productive. As a season, last year was my best one numerically. And I'd love to be able to get to 100 winners this season.
I got to 79 last year but this year I've had as good a summer as I've ever had and I'm on 19 winners now, so to be this close to 20 winners at this stage is quite good and hopefully I can get to my target.
With the ground being as quick as it has been, the racing's going to be fiercely competitive when it does start back and the field sizes are going to be bigger than ever, so from that point of view it's going to be harder to ride winners. But that all said, I think we've got a great team and I'm looking forward to it all.
I actually went out to Sydney for two weeks at the end of the summer, as my sister works there. So in the break I went to see her and took in a few of the sights. I loved all that.
It's great to get a chance to travel a bit and I chose to go about as far away as possible! Sydney is a great city and I'll be honest it took me a little while to get back into the swing of things when I returned, but I'm ready and raring now.
To be honest not really. I've always felt that if you can make it in UK and Ireland racing then that's the thing to do.
If I wasn't so busy in the summer I would have looked at going to Australia but now with the job with Fergal, he tends to keep a lot of horses available over the summer months and that keeps me busy.
In terms of making a career, if you can make it in England or Ireland, that's the place to be.
