Rouget, Graffard or even Britain: what comes next for Christophe Soumillon?

The decision to end one of the most lucrative and prestigious contracts in French racing with one of the sport's most gifted riders will not have been taken lightly by the Aga Khan and his team.

Yet for all that the rupture has come swiftly, there has seemed an almost inescapable certainty to the sequence of the events since Christophe Soumillon sought to ease Rossa Ryan out of the way, a catastrophic error of judgement which could have put his rival in hospital or worse.

Not much more than an hour later he took me to one side and attempted to explain what looked to the outside world as the inexplicable.