'Things need to improve but in the meantime you have to stand your ground'

Monday wasn't a good day for Nicola Currie. She fell off one at Brighton in the afternoon, pretty much in front of the grandstand, after being beaten a head on her only ride of the day, and got a kick and a sore thumb into the bargain. On the way home she got a puncture and had to abandon her car at the nearest petrol station and cadge a lift home to Lambourn.

These are the things that shouldn't happen to the golden girl of the Shergar Cup, but they inevitably do. One minute you're winning the Silver Saddle in front of an adoring Ascot throng; the next you're waiting for the AA man in the car park at Chieveley services. That's racing, as they say when all attempts at rationalisation fail.

Being a modern jockey isn't so much a job as a lifestyle that threatens the sanity. It's about early mornings, late nights, fluctuating fortunes and miles and miles of schlepping to and fro on busy roads for uncertain remuneration. All of which is a far cry from Currie's quiet upbringing on the Isle of Arran, to which she occasionally harks back wistfully, for instance when a flat tyre adds an extra couple of hours to her fruitless day.