'I didn't take out a licence just to have six winners each year'

He looks like a rock star, all that long hair whipping across his face in the wind, but Christian Williams doesn't make a song and dance about life. There's mud up to his ankles as he trudges across the field, a half-full sack of feed over his shoulder like he was some agricultural Father Christmas, and a few grains of snow whetting an edge on the weather. The horses don't want to know.

As the photographer waits patiently for the shot, as hands and ears grow numb, as the wary orbit of last week's big-race winner Limited Reserve finally brings him within range of his trainer, a wolfish smile flashes lopsidedly across Williams' face. This is what makes him happy.

"You don't really get a bond with these horses when you're just riding them in a race," says the former jockey, the low-octave Welshness of his voice lending poetry to even his most prosaic pronouncements. "I've got children now so I can't really say these horses are my family, but that's how they feel to me, that's how I like them to feel to me."