Beaten and bruised after finding Cheltenham can be a lonely, frustrating place

I hoped to leave the Cheltenham Festival with a trophy. Instead, I left the Cheltenham Festival with a body full of bruises.

For those of us who do my job there are two different sorts of festival. Everyone goes into the meeting with such enormous hopes and dreams. Those hopes and dreams have fuelled them for months but very few can be realised. The sad but inevitable reality is only a small percentage of jockeys can leave having achieved what they wanted to achieve. For trainers, it's the same.

Those riders who enjoyed a winner were walking around the weighing room on cloud nine. They were in a minority. Most of us missed out on a winner and were left gutted, thinking about what could have been. When you bring your best horses to the festival but they still don't win it can be pretty deflating. Cheltenham is the hardest place in the world to be successful. It can be a lonely, frustrating place.