Italian diplomat with the world at his feet

There’s a full-blown heatwave hanging over Lingfield this afternoon and it’s a little bit much even for a native Sardinian. “I’m not used to this any more,” says Andrea Atzeni, sweltering in 34 degrees of Surrey sunshine. “I think I must have been away from home too long.”

Decamping from Italy at the age of 15 has clearly left him more attuned to the climatic vagaries of Newmarket than the Mediterranean weather he left behind, and pushing home a first-time-out two-year-old in the second race has left him in need of bottled water and a sit in the shade.

Something the diminutive 25-year-old has become accustomed to, however, is success. Since leaving one Botti (Alduino, in Milan) to join another (Marco, at HQ), Atzeni is established as a rider whose appeal transcends boundaries; the son of a sheep farmer now finds himself working for Italians and Dubaians, Bajans and Qataris, Irishmen and Yorkshiremen, Old Etonians and Old Carthusians and anybody else involved in the supply of quality bloodstock, and it has come as no surprise to anybody with a working knowledge of his psyche that he has scampered up the racing ladder at a velocity that might induce vertigo in a normal human being.