Extraordinary communicator with a remarkable eye for a horse

I was very lucky with everybody I worked with before becoming a trainer and I've always been enormously grateful to Patrick Chamings, who I worked for as pupil assistant. I'm 6ft 3in, sturdily built, I didn't know anything and I couldn't even ride out. If he hadn't given me that chance, who knows what I would have ended up doing?

I then went as assistant trainer to Hughie Morrison, from whom I also learned an awful lot, and then to Gai Waterhouse for 15 months. She probably had the most significant influence on my training career.

I went to Australia in 2009-10, sort of as her apprentice so I could follow her everywhere. When she went off into the country with her bloodstock team, I went too, and I went to the sales in Sydney and Melbourne, and I was there at trackwork at Randwick.