{"id":432854,"date":"2025-09-18T05:03:16","date_gmt":"2025-09-18T05:03:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/432854\/"},"modified":"2025-09-18T05:03:16","modified_gmt":"2025-09-18T05:03:16","slug":"paul-townend-when-the-tour-de-france-came-to-ireland-i-was-on-my-bicycle-watching-the-all-ireland-i-was-going-to-be-a-hurler-but-i-always-came-back-to-racing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/432854\/","title":{"rendered":"Paul Townend: \u2018When the Tour de France came to Ireland, I was on my bicycle. Watching the All-Ireland, I was going to be a hurler. But I always came back to racing\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-91174671_secondary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom4 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop4\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\" data-testid=\"title-summary\">\nFor jockey Paul Townend, nothing will ever match the thrill of horse racing, except maybe a famous golf comeback, or a controversial Formula One final\u2026 Here, he shares three of his greatest sporting memories\n<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Paul Townend. Photo: The Jockey Club\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/7bfffffa-c041-4bdb-9e6c-698f983bc7b1.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_caption1 indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_secondary indo-66f0fec7_regular indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop3 indo-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">Paul Townend. Photo: The Jockey Club<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">I still remember how I felt watching Frankie Dettori\u2019s \u2018Magnificent Seven\u2019 at Ascot Racecourse on September 28, 1996.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">I was always interested in racing, but watching Dettori ride all seven winners at the British Festival of Racing that year, you knew that there was something really special happening here. It\u2019s some feat, and I don\u2019t think it\u2019d ever been done before. It turned Dettori into the \u2018public jockey\u2019. He became a crossover personality, a household name and it brought him fame outside of the racing bubble.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For jockey Paul Townend, nothing will ever match the thrill of horse racing, except maybe a famous golf&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":432855,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4107],"tags":[79124,1071,79,4320,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-432854","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-racing","8":"tag-life-magazine","9":"tag-racing","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-tiger-woods","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115223554266206593","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=432854"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/432854\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/432855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=432854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=432854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=432854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}