'It's hard to look past my Gold Cup winner - he made my career'

It was a great day when I won the Royal & SunAlliance Hurdle on French Holly in 1998 but it's hard to look past a Gold Cup winner, so it has to be Cool Dawn, trained by Robert Alner.

The first time I rode him was in a handicap chase at Ascot and he was foot perfect until the last, where I changed my mind three or four times and he dived through it. Luckily he stood up, I managed to stay on board and we won, but that was the fine line between where I got to in my career and what I might have missed out on. It was on TV and in the Sunday papers and people said what a recovery it was, when in fact it was all jockey error.

In the lead-up to Cheltenham I told people honestly that I couldn't split Cool Dawn, a 25-1 shot, and See More Business, an 11-2 shot I'd won the King George on earlier that season. Dorans Pride was the 9-4 favourite and an obvious threat, but French Holly winning the previous day had taken the pressure off me, so I went as hard as I could over the first two, gave him a little click, pinged the first down the back and then was able to do my own thing and dictate, gain a little bit of free ground round the bend and stay on up the hill.