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" When I was 18, I broke my leg, and my shin came right through - like I had two knees. "

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" Horses are like people - they have different personalities. They can be nice, friendly and hard-working, or awkward, difficult and lazy. If horses were people, some would be on the dole, and others would be entrepreneurs. "

" You only worry about your head or spinal column. Everything else, some way or another, will repair in time. "

" Really racing is about the horses, not me. You can't do it without the horses, and they are the big players as are the lads who look after them, and they rarely get a mention. "

" My first winner was on Legal Steps, in Ireland, at Thurles, in March 1992. I rode for Jim Bolger, and his stable jockey was Christy Roche. "

" Many of us in the jockeys' room are wasting to ride many pounds below our natural weight, but all the while you are doing that, you also want to ensure that you are as strong as possible so that you can give your mount every possible chance in a race. "

" When I'm injured, I eat everything - proper junk. That's the one thing about being injured so much, I get to treat myself. "

" Sir Gordon Richards was the most successful jockey - flat or jumps - there's ever been: champion jockey for 26 years. He set a record of 269 winners in the season 55 years before I broke it. That was my greatest achievement. "

" If you've got a regular feed of winners, you control your mind to do it. It becomes a must. If you didn't have that regular flow of winning, whether you could get yourself to do that, I don't know. It's a lot easier when you know the next day you can win and you can win and win, it's worth doing it. "

" I've appreciated every winner. I love them all. "

" If you ask most trainers who have ridden which pressure is greater - watching your horse or riding it - they will tell you it is harder watching it because you have no control over what happens. "

" There is no place for arrogance or complacency in racing because you are up there one minute and on your backside the next. "

" From a public perspective, the Grand National is the biggest race of all, and not to have won it yet is definitely a failure. But there's been a lot of jockeys every bit as good and better than me that haven't won it - John Francome, Peter Scudamore, Jonjo O'Neill, Charlie Swan, to name a few. "

" I probably don't look healthy, but I have never got to the stage where I thought I was going to pass out. "

" I am quite hard to live with, and I know that if I go through a bad run, I'm not the best company and am best left alone. But I'm not nearly as bad as people like to make out. "

" No matter how long I go without riding winners, I know in the back of my head that I can ride. "

" It will not surprise you to learn that it is not uncommon for jockeys who struggle with their weight to starve themselves and spend hours in the sauna to lose a few pounds to be able to make a big-race ride. "

" I am disappointed when I don't win, because I want to believe I can win on every horse I ride, which is a ridiculous thing to think. Even if I'm on a horse that I have woken up thinking has no chance, by the time I've reached the course, I'll have convinced myself that it can win and will be disappointed if it doesn't. "

" A helmet is the most important part of any jockey's kit because of the number of falls you take, so I wouldn't want to be wearing anything on the track unless it had been thoroughly tested. "

" Even though people involved in racing think that it has a big sporting stage, it is a minority sport compared to some of the other high-profile events: football, Formula One or golf. "

" You don't have to be Einstein to see that horse racing is dangerous. Those two ambulances driving behind you aren't there for the scenery. I will never get over the fatalities of colleagues. It is the saddest and toughest part of this sport. "

" I've ridden 3,651 winners, if that's any good to you. I don't count the falls. I count the winners. "

" If summer racing didn't exist, I could go on holiday, yes, because nobody else would then be riding winners; but as long it goes ahead, I'll do it for the reason that I want to ride more winners than anyone else. "

" In my opinion, the power of the mind in sport is vital. If you can overpower those physical risks mentally, you can get your body round it physically. I've made my body do things because of my mind that it shouldn't have been able to do. "

" I'm very lucky that I love what I do. I've never thought of it as work. I've never done it for the money. "

" It's not hard to motivate myself because once you get a taste for winning races, you simply don't want to do anything else. You get a buzz from it. You want it every day. Only someone who has experienced winning can understand how good it feels. "

" Racing is a great sport, but we need people to come along and see that for themselves. Maybe they're not used to going racing or haven't been before, but I think people get a taste for it; they do come back. "

" There are many tough sides to being a jockey. Injury is something we all dread, but spending lengthy periods in the bath or the sauna just to shed a few pounds can be an exhausting and draining experience. "

" I suppose I'm happy when I know I've given a horse a good ride, no matter where it is. I like playing golf in the summer; I'm happy when I hit a good shot, and I enjoy watching Arsenal playing beautiful football, but overall I can't believe you can be happy when you're not winning. I honestly can't accept that. "

" When you give someone a commitment to ride their horse, you do it - unless, God forbid, something serious has happened. It would be laziness not to do it. "

" I feel pressure every day. It is only pressure that I put on myself, but I would expect all professional sportspeople to feel pressure to perform their best whenever they are at work. "