Speaking out about personal suffering is heroic - and you won't regret it

It must have been a good three-quarters of an hour into the conversation, maybe more. It came as a complete shock, even bigger than the 33-1 Galway Plate win a few weeks earlier, which was the reason we were there in the first place.

We had already covered Clarcam, and the genius that is Gordon Elliott. We had sorted out all the problems with Irish racing between us and agreed that the life of a young jump jockey is anything but easy. We had hovered over hurling and football for a good while, and his face lit up when he spoke about Sophie, his daughter who was 18 months old at the time.

Then, like a bolt from the blue, Mark Enright revealed to me that he should not have been there at all. No, not that he should not have been sitting across from me in the Knightsbrook Hotel in Trim, but that he should not have been anywhere; that he should be dead.