Seamster to pick up the winning thread and give layers the needle

Back in the summer of 1998 there was a David Nicholls-trained sprinter called Sihafi who won seven times between June 29 and September 26 and became a real favourite of mine.

He scored at seven different tracks – Haydock, Sandown, Salisbury, Lingfield, Folkestone, Bath and Windsor – during that period, and seemed to run every week.

Sihafi, whose victories included one at odds of 14-1 – I still remember screaming, “get up Paul [Goode, rider], get up Paul”, in the Ladbrokes in Epsom that glorious Haydock day – made a happy habit of defying those who believed the assessor had finally caught up with him.