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Mike Smith: 'Covid killed the Breeders' Cup for me – let's just start 2021 now'
The top US jockey, 55, talks Zenyatta, horse welfare and Olivia Newton-John
Mike Smith: 'We need to show people we’re looking after our horses'Credit: Tom Pennington / Getty Images
What's your earliest racing memory?
Both sides of my family were involved in racing and I've been going racing for as long as I can remember. My father's parents lived in El Paso and my mother's parents lived in New Mexico, so I would often go to the races with my grandparents and my uncles at Ruidoso Downs in New Mexico and at Sunland Park in El Paso.
What was your big break?
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Nick PulfordJournalist
Published on inInterviews
Last updated
Copymore inInterviews
- Oisin Murphy: 'Having my counsellor is a big help - I don't feel anything I bring to her is too much'
- Sir Michael Stoute: 'I still enjoy it but probably not as much as I ever did - it can't be much longer'
- 'I put all my eggs in one basket and I had no-one when I left - I was just riding everywhere and anywhere'
- 'It was the best race I ever rode and I was very proud of it - but Sheikh Hamdan thought it was terrible!'
- Aidan O'Brien: 'The weirdest, strangest, most impossible things can happen in racing and in life'
more inInterviews
- Oisin Murphy: 'Having my counsellor is a big help - I don't feel anything I bring to her is too much'
- Sir Michael Stoute: 'I still enjoy it but probably not as much as I ever did - it can't be much longer'
- 'I put all my eggs in one basket and I had no-one when I left - I was just riding everywhere and anywhere'
- 'It was the best race I ever rode and I was very proud of it - but Sheikh Hamdan thought it was terrible!'
- Aidan O'Brien: 'The weirdest, strangest, most impossible things can happen in racing and in life'