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" 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. "

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" A lot of healing is in the mind. I'm not talking about serious illnesses like cancer. I'm talking about ordinary broken bones. Healing begins in the head. You have to convince yourself you can do it. "

" I have seen countless colleagues struggle to come to terms with retirement. I learned a lot from Richard Dunwoody when he was riding, and I completely understand why he took off and undertook what most people consider mad challenges. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" The National is about however long it takes to run that race - eight minutes of fame - but champion jockey is about racing 365 days a year. I actually wouldn't swap any of my winners for the National. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" When I started off riding, you dream about being champion jockey. Then I wanted to be champion jockey again. Then I wanted to ride 200 winners in a season. Then, when there was a chance of riding more winners than Richard Dunwoody, that was my goal. "

" During every race, an ambulance trails the riders around the course. You know that sometimes you are going to end up in the back of that ambulance. "

" The day I go out there and don't want to win is the day I will give up. "

" Racing may be a minority sport, but I wouldn't swap it for all the money in the world. "

" Doctors are fantastic, but they err on the side of caution. But you can push yourself. You're not going to die from pain. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" The criticism does not hurt because I have always been my own worst critic. I wouldn't say I don't respect other people's opinions, but my opinion is the most important. "

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

" I dream up things, and then I convince myself that they're possible. "

" 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. "

" I could never have ridden 4,000 winners without loving my job, and If I ever get to the point where I'm not loving it, I'll stop. "

" I get butterflies before going out to ride every day, but they disappear as soon as I am on a horse, and I think that is the same for most jockeys. Then it is just down to you and the horse, and there is a certain freedom in that. "

" Most days, I have a slice of toast, then lie in a hot bath for an hour to get up a sweat. I have a sauna at the racecourse and then go and ride. On the way home, I might stop at a service station and have a bar of chocolate and a Diet Coke. And that's it, basically. "

" 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. "

" For eight or 10 years, I got wrapped up in chasing records. Everything was a number. Didn't matter what I won, it was a number. Every horse I rode was a number. "

" By the nature of the sport and the danger we face daily, we are very close knit. Some of us have spent most of our lives together. To give you an example, having spent two decades sitting next to Richard Johnson and seeing him virtually every day, I have probably spent more time with him than I have my family, and he the same. "