The turf | 20 July 2017

A woman I once encountered at the dining table whose prime years were clearly behind her described herself as ‘approaching fifty’. Noting our raised eyebrows she added, ‘Look dears, I don’t have to say from which side.’ Suddenly the weighing room too seems full of veterans. Lightweight jockey Jimmy Quinn is certainly approaching 50 from the wrong end while Frankie Dettori and Franny Norton, both still in their riding prime, are 46. It was, though, the 49-year-old John Egan, who recently shrugged off a chipped vertebra in a Kempton fall with a teenager’s resilience, who had me comparing. I noted lately the remarkable coincidence that both he and his talented apprentice son David, the only father-and-son team currently riding, had secured exactly 16 winners each from an identical 140 mounts this season.

At Ascot last Saturday John told me that he began partnering winners on the Irish pony racing scene at the age of seven in the 1970s.