Why racing will miss Barry Geraghty

When I first began racing, few jump jockeys reckoned their careers would last beyond the ages of 32 or 33. But they last longer these days.

Lying on the Aintree turf, though, after a fall in April last year, with his leg bent impossibly inwards, the 39-year-old Barry Geraghty wondered if that was where it was all going to end for him. (He has in the past few years broken both legs, both arms, fractured eight ribs and punctured a lung.) But that was only until the morphine kicked in. After six months of rehab for a broken fibula and tibia, he returned once more to the saddle and demonstrated with five glorious victories at the Cheltenham Festival in March that he was as good as ever. At the time he knew, although we didn’t, that at 40 it was going to be his last Festival and now he has announced his retirement.