'I stood between Ted Walsh and Robert Hall, the angel and the devil on your shoulder' - Patrick Mullins meets Jane Mangan

I rode with Miss JM Mangan. She was intelligent (intimidatingly so), professional (intimidatingly so) and not majorly inclined towards making friends (at least on the racecourse). A speak-when-spoken-to kind of girl, but one who wasn’t afraid to say what she thought when she wanted to. Tomboy style and a lot of red hair. She’d have made a brilliant character in a film; Hermione Granger perhaps.

As a rider she was stylish, strong and tactically aware. But, for her own reasons, it was never going to be a career, just a hobby for a few years until she got a proper job.

She could have had a proper riding job but that wasn’t her plan, even when she won the GPT Handicap at Galway for Dermot Weld, even when she won the Grade 1 Punchestown Champion Bumper for David Pipe, even when Gigginstown were using her in prestigious handicaps. Great fun, but not what she wanted. Being a jockey isn’t really a grown-up job I suppose, and Jane was always very grown up.