Britain’s next top jockey - it’s always fun trying to spot them and one up-and-coming apprentice is a quiet phenomenon

It’s fun trying to spot promising young riders and following their progress. I’m looking forward to the headline, ‘Gale Blows Away The Opposition’. That’s Elizabeth Gale. Oh, she just has done, winning the Ladies Derby at the Curragh on Masoun.

Not that Gale, at 23, is particularly young, having taken time off with a broken back and initially concentrating on point-to-pointing, then jumps racing under rules.

Gale still intends to ride over jumps as a conditional jockey but this year has turned her attention to the Flat and made an immediate impact. So far, she has won on six of her 27 rides. Those successes have been for Richard Newland and Jamie Insole, Bernard Llewellyn, James Owen and now Joseph O’Brien. It will be a surprise if the list doesn’t expand as Gale improves with experience.