interview | eddie jordan
Herbert, Eddie Irvine and Ralf Schumacher all drove for the Jordan team. After more than a decade blazing a trail and teetering on the brink amid all the F1 cut and thrust, Eddie sold his team to Midland before bowing out of the race. But his unique team-owner’s perspective and that same irreverent, shoots-from- the-hip spirit were a winning combination in front of the camera, and the BBC snapped him up as their analyst. He now heads Channel 4’s F1 coverage and presents BBC’s Top Gear alongside Matt Le Blanc, the Friends actor – Eddie, not being one for sitting down much or watching TV, had never seen the popular series. Ever an instinctive entrepreneur, Eddie has had fingers in plenty of other pies, including an investment firm and energy drink, vodka and property companies. He’s also a patron of leukaemia charity CLIC. With four grown-up children, he and his wife Marie, herself a former Irish basketball team player (and here on Ladies’ Day looking fabulous), divide their time between houses in the UK, Monaco and Cape Town, as well as spending time on their yacht. Somehow, with a relentless schedule, Eddie still manages to find the time for drumming with his band Eddie and the Robbers. Small wonder he never had the time to loll about on the sofa binge-watching Friends, really. But despite his international standing, Eddie has a soft spot a furlong wide for home-grown talent, sharing enthusiasm – and sometime ownership – with fellow countryman, trainer Mouse Morris. “I’ve had a couple of runners here, I’ve always been devoted to Mouse Morris. Mouse is from a very small yard and stable in the village of Fethard in County Tipperary which is world-renowned for Coolmore et cetera (the largest thoroughbred stud in the world), but Mouse has just 60 or 70 horses. “The friendship is different. If I go to see Mouse or go to the yard I stay the night – we go and have a drink and talk about things and then he stays with us. We’ve become amazingly good friends and I think that it’s so important – in life generally but in sport in particular – that you have the ability to be able to mix these relationships.” E ddie holds racehorse owner and tycoon JP McManus in equally high regard. “Yesterday I woke up and the first thing I said was ‘did JP win the race?’ and they said yes, and so sometime today I’ll make it to his box because I want to congratulate him, because he’s a good mate. But you know, it just seems to go on and on and on, what JP is able to do, with Nicky Henderson and previously with Charlie Swan and then other trainers. “What I like about him is that JP has never changed. He’s probably the most lovable man you could ever find and the fact that he has all these horses and is so successful, well… in life there is such a thing as begrudgery but there is not a single person I know that could ever begrudge JP the massive success he has.” But all that glitters in the Emerald Isle is not just Gold Cups and Eddie is rightly proud of his country’s sporting successes and camaraderie. “I think our own national sports, Gaelic football and hurling both help keep it strong. I love what the rugby team does. And there’s the soccer, what Roy Keane and Martin O’Neill are doing is exemplary. “I think for such a small country we always seem to punch above our weight and that’s what gives me such pleasure, because yes, we’re small but we embrace each other’s sports. If Paul McGinley wins the Ryder Cup for Europe we feed off that, if Jordan was to win the Grand Prix we’d feed off that, if the rugby wins the Grand Slam, we feed off that. It’s hugely exciting.” Eddie seems to exemplify the generous sportsman’s spirit that underpins The Festival.The next race announcement heralds the end of our chat but he takes the time to tell me I’ve been a sweetheart – that Blarney Stone is still working its magic – then he’s off. But it’s clear that, perhaps a shade more than most of us, Eddie Jordan truly understands what racing excitement is all about.
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