'I could have kept riding and got childcare but I didn't want that'

This retirement home is rather different from the rest. No old-age pensioners, no knitting needles and more chance of getting some rest and recuperation on a bouncy castle at a toddler's birthday party than in the sitting room of this secluded two-storey house hidden in the hills of south Tipperary.

Welcome inside the home of the most successful female rider Ireland has ever produced, where the adorable Rosie, who turns one on Wednesday, already has a degree in destruction. Photographs inside frames are fearing for their lives, books and boxes neatly piled on a pouffe are soon scattered all over the floor and the receipt for Sophie's Big Noisy Book! can be ripped up. Never has a book been so aptly named.

It is the way Nina Carberry wanted it. These sitting room shenanigans are the reason why she won't be in Killarney on Sunday, or at Punchestown, Clonmel and Downpatrick later in the week. The choice was simple: make more history or make more memories.