Seán Keogh doesn’t know where his passion for horses and racing came from. The Dublin-born Senior Foreman at Godolphin’s Flemington operation had the urge to learn to ride when he was seven or eight. At 13, he got his first summer job mucking out stables. When he was given the chance to ride some of the racehorses there, too, he was hooked.
“Back when I began riding, nobody in my family knew a horse from its mane to its tail! But I kept banging on about wanting to ride, and a friend of a friend of my grandfather had showjumpers. I eventually got the chance to ride them, and I got the bug. There was no racing history in my family – I was an outlier,” said Keogh.
"This is me – I want to work with horses the whole way through my life" - Seán Keogh
“But my family supported my interest. They saw my dedication – I was up and at the stables by 6am every Saturday to work. So, they sent me off to the Academy to follow my passion and now my family are very involved in racing. They stay up late into Saturday night in Ireland to watch the Aussie racing and my parents have travelled to race meets in Dubai, Hong Kong and Australia. They’ve well and truly taken racing on board now.”
At 15, Keogh left home to study at the Racing Academy and Centre of Education at the Curragh. He studied with the prolific trainer, Dessie Hughes, and after qualifying as a jockey he travelled to races across Ireland before building his racing experience by moving to the United States.