Squeezed middle

It’s a tough old business, this racing. Hayley Turner is the best woman rider we’ve ever seen in this country. She rode two Group One winners in the space of six weeks in 2011 and is only 32, but she has decided to end the struggle to find enough decent rides and to quit at the end of the season. Former champion Kieren Fallon, the rider of three Derby winners, has disappeared to the US. ‘At 50 there was nothing left for him here: it was a case of go abroad or get out,’ one of his former rivals told me last week.

Then there is Seb Sanders, who in 2007 shared the Jockeys’ Championship with Jamie Spencer. Earlier this month, when Seb rode a horse called Langley Vale at Goodwood, he did so in his stockinged feet, with no boots, explaining that he had arrived too late to take a sauna before racing and had discarded his footwear to help him achieve his allotted weight of 9st 5lb.