‘I know. That I was once the jockey Sid Halley.’

‘The champion jockey Sid Halley,’ he corrected. ‘When I was a boy, my father was always talking about you as being the best ever. So I wanted to be you. Except for …’

He tailed off and glanced down at my left hand.

‘And now you are being me,’ I said, trying to be upbeat and not too conceited.

‘I’m not yet the champion,’ he said, looking back at my face. ‘But I’m doing my best.’

‘Well done. I’ll look out for you later. What’s your name?’

‘Peter Minter. But everybody calls me Minty.’

‘Well, Minty, how many rides do you have today?’

‘Two. One in the first and another in the bumper.’

A bumper was the National Hunt Flat Race, always the last on the card.

‘Who booked them for you?’ I asked.

‘Do you mean the trainers?’

I shook my head. ‘No. Who’s your agent?’

‘Dale Wroxton. From Leeds. He looks after quite a few of us from round here.’

‘Not Anton Valance?’

He looked at me quite sharply. ‘No.’

‘Why not? I hear he’s very good.’

‘Very good at poaching, you mean.’

‘Poaching?’

‘He’s very good at getting some jocks, especially the younger ones, to switch from whoever acts for them to him. He charges only 8 per cent while Dale charges me 10, and some agents even charge 12.’

Anton Valance could afford to take less from the jockeys, I thought, if he was also charging a 10 per cent trainers’ premium.

‘Has he tried to poach you?’ I asked.

‘Several times,’ said Minty. ‘He works for a company called The Jockeys Stable, and they’re always leaving leaflets in the jockeys’ car park, you know, stuck under the wipers. They also keep sending me emails promising to get me two or three times as many rides, and for all the top trainers. But as my dad always says, “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.” Anyway, I’m happy with Dale. He knows where I prefer to go and is happy for me to ride for the people I like.’

Good for you, I thought. But it might not make you the champion.

‘But the other jockeys,’ I said, ‘those he does sign, do they seem happy with him?’

‘Suppose so. Not my business. You’d better ask them. I have to go now or I’ll be late for the first.’ And with that, he disappeared into the changing rooms.

I remained standing there and used my phone to look up The Jockeys Stable on the internet. Sure enough, it was there, but there was still no mention anywhere of someone called Anton Valance.

No wonder I was having so much trouble finding him.