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Tom Marquand: 'If you don't want to be champion jockey you shouldn't be a jockey at all - it's as simple as that'
Catherine Macrae talks to the top jockey about innocent dreams, title ambitions and foreign success
A cafe in Maidenhead is not the typical meeting place for one of Britain's leading jockeys, but Tom Marquand has become a particularly hard man to pin down.
He will not find his busy schedule an entirely unwelcome problem given what has gone before. Marquand, 25, has faced a muddling start to the year and a recent four-day spell on the sidelines is just the latest stumbling block the jockey has had to endure.
Stitches near his elbow are the final reminder of what is oddly the second time he has been on the receiving end of a kick on the way down to post, this time when due to partner Derby hope Waipiro in a Listed contest the day before the 2,000 Guineas.
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Published on inThe Big Read
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Copy- ‘I’ve never had to deal with that in my career and I did find it hard - you start asking yourself what you’re doing wrong’
- 'I don't want to be part of this narrative that Irish trainers are better than us - I think that's rubbish, it drives me nuts'
- 'The grief hits me quite a lot - so many people think I'm really tough but I get terribly upset by things inwardly'
- 'The numbers went in the wrong direction and you're an idiot if you don't think about it - but you back what you're doing'
- 'My wife wants to know why I'm reading the sales catalogue in bed - it's relentless, but you have to be on it all the time'
- ‘I’ve never had to deal with that in my career and I did find it hard - you start asking yourself what you’re doing wrong’
- 'I don't want to be part of this narrative that Irish trainers are better than us - I think that's rubbish, it drives me nuts'
- 'The grief hits me quite a lot - so many people think I'm really tough but I get terribly upset by things inwardly'
- 'The numbers went in the wrong direction and you're an idiot if you don't think about it - but you back what you're doing'
- 'My wife wants to know why I'm reading the sales catalogue in bed - it's relentless, but you have to be on it all the time'