The turf: Winning trail

The most colourful sight at Sandown on the Saturday before the Cheltenham Festival was not the jockeys’ silks but the vivid bruising around Ruby Walsh’s eye as he returned on his first winner since breaking his leg in November. The blues, reds and yellows visible on his stitched-up face were the result of a fall on King of the Refs at Naas three days before. Had he feared the worst as his mount had gone down? Oh, no, said Ruby matter-of-factly, in a jump jockey’s life there is all the difference in the world between ordinary nuisance pain and ‘oh, my God, I’ve broken it’ pain.

We’ll have had plenty of glory at Cheltenham by the time you read this — producing words before the four-day extravaganza that won’t be read until after it isn’t the racing scribe’s easiest task — but sometimes we should remember the privations these gladiators endure to give us our thrills.