Denis O'Regan: 'I just realised I couldn't take it anymore - I need to let my body and brain unwind'

Denis O’Regan professes that in his younger days he was uninterested in schoolwork and untalented at exams, but that’s hard to believe. His powers of recall and depth of analysis of the horses he has piloted in his recently concluded career are so vivid you would fancy him to cruise through on the bridle, pulling double.

His memory of his first winner is a case in point.

“That was on a four-year-old mare called All Honey, in a National Hunt Flat race at Listowel, April 2001," he says. "She was by Fourstars Allstar. I probably fell asleep somewhere in the race, the ground was soft and they’d gone a right gallop. I was still perched turning in, about fifth or sixth. I was lucky really, the others stopped and, when she passed one, she wanted to pass them all.