'There are times it seems too tough, but you aim for good days and good horses'

If all the nightmare scenarios are to be believed, working in a racing yard is nobody's dream job.

Believe all you read and you'll be forgiven for thinking that taking the job title of 'stable staff' is akin to stepping back 50 years into a class-ridden, patriarchal society, working 25 hours a day up to your knees in horse droppings and then being thrashed to sleep with a riding crop by a trainer who forgets he's not been in the army since the war ended.

No doubt one or two of those yards still exist, but a combination of a more caring society and more stringent employment law means that they have been overtaken by the modern version, which, while it can't quite shake off racing's image as a sport apart from the mainstream, has, as head lad Tony Gorman puts it, "come into the 21st century in many ways – and it's a lot better for it".