A rider of integrity cut from the same cloth as AP

1 In total, Sir Gordon Richards rode a record 4,870 winners between 1921 and 1954. For 26 of those 34 seasons he was crowned champion jockey and it may well have been more had 1926 and 1941 not been lost to tuberculosis and a broken leg respectively. On 12 occasions he rode more than 200 winners in a year, breaking Fred Archer’s 1885 record of 246 winners by 13 in 1933, a total he advanced to 269 in 1947 and one only bettered by Sir Anthony McCoy over jumps in 2002.

2 From head to toe, Richards measured just 4ft 11½in. As a result he was a featherweight and wasting was never part of his regime. It also meant weight never restricted his rides and he rarely competed in fewer than five races on a card. In seven of his championship seasons he had over 900 mounts, topping 1,000 in 1936.

3 Richards had a unique, almost ungainly style in the saddle, one that was scoffed at in the early part of his career. The principles were inherited from his role model Steve Donoghue, stable jockey at Martin Hartigan’s Foxhill yard when 15-year-old Richards arrived to serve his apprenticeship. The slightly upright body position which Donoghue had increasingly adopted as the result of a shoulder injury became the Richards stance.