Former champion calls time on career in the saddle

Image © Healy Racing

Maxine O’Sullivan signed off on her successful career in the saddle by retiring following victory in the Tramore finale on Thursday.

The Cork native teamed up with her fiancée Emmet Mullins’ Dream On Baby to record a bloodless 12-length success in the Conor Lannen Country Store Ladies Maiden, after which she announced her retirement from race riding.

That was a 49th victory under rules in Ireland and Britain for O’Sullivan, who has excelled between the flags, in particular.

The first of her 500 point-to-point rides was at Aghabullogue in January 2008 aboard Merry Mason, a horse owned and trained by her father Eugene. It was that same horse which supplied her with her initial victory a month later at Knockanard. 

That would be the first of 80 point-to-point winners in Ireland for her, 48 of which were recorded on horses trained by her father, in a glittering career within the sphere which included several highlights.

Crowned p2p.ie champion lady rider on seven occasions – her first title came in 2010 when she shared the spoils with Liz Lalor, before securing the crown outright four years later with a personal-best campaign which saw her ride 13 winners, including four aboard her families leading open horse The Hollinwell.

Further title success followed in 2019, 2020, 2021, 2023, and most recently in 2024, when she was joint-champion alongside Susie Doyle.

In all, O’Sullivan rode three doubles, the first of which was at Templemore in 2015, followed by a repeat of that feat at both Kildorrery and Stradbally in 2023.

In December 2019, she registered a first winner in the four-year-old maiden division, when Coqolino won at Ballindenisk, and in doing so she became just the eighth female rider to win a four-year-old in the previous 30 years.

That was the first of two four-year-old maiden races that she won, as she also went on to win a similar contest at Boulta in 2021 aboard Meetingofthewaters, a subsequent Paddy Power Chase winner.

Without doubt, her greatest moment in the saddle came at the 2020 Cheltenham Festival, when she guided the 66/1 shot, It Came To Pass, to a famous victory in the St. James’s Place Foxhunters.

The pair defeated the favourite Billaway by a comprehensive ten lengths in a moment which saw her and father Eugene also win the Special Achievement prize at that year’s HRI Awards.

Her final winner between the flags was recorded aboard the legendary Winged Leader, her fourth time to partner the Winged Love gelding, when the pair won a ladies open at Moig South in November 2024.