TONY MCCOY

If summer racing didn't exist, I could go on holiday, yes, because nobody else would then be riding winners; but as long it goes ahead, I'll do it for the reason that I want to ride more winners than anyone else.

I'm very lucky to live my life through a sport that I love. I'm in a very privileged position that my work is my hobby.

There are many tough sides to being a jockey. Injury is something we all dread, but spending lengthy periods in the bath or the sauna just to shed a few pounds can be an exhausting and draining experience.

When I was a kid, if someone had asked who I'd meet if it could be anyone in the world, it would've been Liam Brady.

Sir Gordon Richards was the most successful jockey - flat or jumps - there's ever been: champion jockey for 26 years. He set a record of 269 winners in the season 55 years before I broke it. That was my greatest achievement.

I've appreciated every winner. I love them all.

By the nature of the sport and the danger we face daily, we are very close knit. Some of us have spent most of our lives together. To give you an example, having spent two decades sitting next to Richard Johnson and seeing him virtually every day, I have probably spent more time with him than I have my family, and he the same.

I am quite hard to live with, and I know that if I go through a bad run, I'm not the best company and am best left alone. But I'm not nearly as bad as people like to make out.

Really racing is about the horses, not me. You can't do it without the horses, and they are the big players as are the lads who look after them, and they rarely get a mention.

I dream up things, and then I convince myself that they're possible.

If I go racing tomorrow and I have five rides that all get beaten, all I want to do is get out there the next day and put it right. I hate having Sundays off; I hate having any day off.

When I started off riding, you dream about being champion jockey. Then I wanted to be champion jockey again. Then I wanted to ride 200 winners in a season. Then, when there was a chance of riding more winners than Richard Dunwoody, that was my goal.

It will not surprise you to learn that it is not uncommon for jockeys who struggle with their weight to starve themselves and spend hours in the sauna to lose a few pounds to be able to make a big-race ride.

I've ridden 3,651 winners, if that's any good to you. I don't count the falls. I count the winners.

I was determined my 4,000th winner would be in the green and gold colours of J. P. McManus and trained by Jonjo O'Neill, who have been my greatest supporters.

It always hurts a bit to pick the 'wrong one' in a race as big as the Champion Hurdle, and then, to make matters worse, you go and get beat by the horse you rejected.

I'm very lucky that I love what I do. I've never thought of it as work. I've never done it for the money.

I know from sitting around with injuries how difficult life will be without racing and riding winners.

I never had a written contract, was never officially a stable jockey.

When I'm injured, I eat everything - proper junk. That's the one thing about being injured so much, I get to treat myself.

In my opinion, the power of the mind in sport is vital. If you can overpower those physical risks mentally, you can get your body round it physically. I've made my body do things because of my mind that it shouldn't have been able to do.

If you break your sternum or your ribs, you can still move. It's going to hurt, but if you can cope with it, you'll do it.

I've always got a sweet tooth. I have chocolate hidden in places that nobody knows about.

Racing may be a minority sport, but I wouldn't swap it for all the money in the world.

Private dreams are the most powerful. You have to dream of success to make it happen, and if you don't believe in yourself, nobody else will. But that doesn't mean you have to go around telling everyone about it.