Praise indeed

Shortly after he became champion apprentice, when he was launching the next stage of his career from Mick Channon’s stables back in 2001, the lads nicknamed Chris Catlin the ‘Cat’. His surname helped but so did the fact that the pale-faced, dark-eyed jockey moves quietly about the place. His unobtrusive style hasn’t changed. You simply couldn’t imagine Chris Catlin doing a Frankie Dettori flying dismount. But two significant things have happened this season to one of the best-liked middle-rank jockeys. Back in May his colleagues applauded him back into the weighing room for riding his 1,000th winner, and the highly particular Sir Mark Prescott has begun regularly putting Catlin, along with Luke Morris, aboard the horses he sends out from Kremlin House, Newmarket, praising him publicly as a real professional. From an ultra-realist who had only two stable jockeys over the previous 40 years, that is a description to cherish.