The Turf: Ladies’ tights in a jockey’s pocket

The first time I met the jockey Andrew Thornton, at a hotel dinner, he had a pair of ladies tights sticking out of his pocket. No, he hadn’t just been interrupted in an amorous encounter in the car park. Nor does he have an eyebrow-raising secret taste in underwear. The tights were part of the equipment he had brought along to demonstrate to the audience we were both addressing that night just what a jockey’s life involves. Tough as the saddle gladiators look, those all-enveloping lightweight garments are essential under their breeches to help keep out the cold as they coax and coerce half a ton of horseflesh for two or three miles over fences and hurdles in every kind of weather.

Andrew talks as well as he rides and there can be few better guides to the racing life. Jump jockeys, statistically, should expect a fall every 14 rides and only a true lover of the sport would go on flogging his body round the nation’s racetracks for as long as he has done.