'Pat Eddery nicked my aeroplane - and I only found out when I saw it on the TV!'

Willie Carson has recalled the moment he only discovered his great friend and rival Pat Eddery had taken his aeroplane without his knowledge when he saw the aircraft in question as he watched the racing on TV that afternoon.

Carson was speaking to the Racing Post for the anniversary of a landmark victory for Eddery, who reached 4,000 winners in the saddle when he landed the 1997 St Leger on Silver Patriarch. It would prove to be his final British Classic win and six years later he called time on a remarkable career that saw him crowned champion jockey on 11 occasions.

In a major feature for Sunday's newspaper, Eddery's contemporaries Carson, Bruce Raymond and George Cadwaladr, plus Ed Dunlop, son of Silver Patriarch's trainer John, recalled the man who inherited Lester Piggott's mantle as the sport's main gun for hire and etched his name indelibly on to the roll call of all-time greats. They also lament the tragic demise that saw his life end shockingly in 2015 at the age of just 63 when his body gave out under the weight of his long-standing addiction to alcohol.

Willie Carson: 'On the turf Eddery was a possessed man who wouldn't give you an inch'Credit: Edward Whitaker

Carson laughed as he remembered watching racing from Haydock on television on a rare day off.

"I thought: 'Hang on, that's my plane parked up there in the background.' Pat had only nicked it. We both kept our planes in the same place and something was wrong with his, so he told his pilot to take mine. To this day I still can't remember whether he put any fuel in it."

Eddery's crafty manoeuvre was emblematic of a man who would do anything to get the job done on the racecourse.

"On the turf he was a possessed man who wouldn't give you an inch," Carson said. "Many a time he got me into a pocket and I could hear him giggling: 'Gotcha!'"

Asked to sum up Eddery, Carson added: "Riding came very easily to Pat; he was just a natural. He made mistakes, of course he did. Every jockey makes mistakes. If God was a jockey he'd make mistakes too, but Pat always seemed to know what to do on a horse."

Read more on Pat Eddery in The Big Read, available in Sunday's newspaper or online for Members' Club Ultimate subscribers from 6pm on Saturday. Click here to sign up

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