'You're all doom and gloom but you don't know what's been going on, so I hope we can prove you all wrong and shut you all up'

Old-fashioned. It's an adjective that can amount to an insult in this questing age of artificial intelligence and recreational space travel, but it's one that sits very comfortably with Nico de Boinville. 

"Yes, I'm very much an old-fashioned stable jockey," he agrees, embracing the compliment for what it is, and it's not just in a professional sense that the cap fits either.

De Boinville is not a man who approves of the modern tendency to be constantly rushing around for no apparent reason. As we make our way across the tarmac at Newbury races we spy James Bowen and Charlie Todd, two young jockeys returning tracksuit-clad and rosy-cheeked from a vigorous lap of the track, and he rolls his eyes.