Sir Gordon Richards was the most successful jockey - flat or jumps - there's ever been: champion jockey for 26 years. He set a record of 269 winners in the season 55 years before I broke it. That was my greatest achievement.
Essentially, I am a dreamer. I've dreamed all my life. When I started, I dreamed I'd be Champion because it is a sport that is all about the people who win the most, and I have a fear of not winning.
During every race, an ambulance trails the riders around the course. You know that sometimes you are going to end up in the back of that ambulance.
It's not hard to motivate myself because once you get a taste for winning races, you simply don't want to do anything else. You get a buzz from it. You want it every day. Only someone who has experienced winning can understand how good it feels.
There is no place for arrogance or complacency in racing because you are up there one minute and on your backside the next.
My first winner was on Legal Steps, in Ireland, at Thurles, in March 1992. I rode for Jim Bolger, and his stable jockey was Christy Roche.
Horses are like people - they have different personalities. They can be nice, friendly and hard-working, or awkward, difficult and lazy. If horses were people, some would be on the dole, and others would be entrepreneurs.
Even though people involved in racing think that it has a big sporting stage, it is a minority sport compared to some of the other high-profile events: football, Formula One or golf.
You don't have to be Einstein to see that horse racing is dangerous. Those two ambulances driving behind you aren't there for the scenery. I will never get over the fatalities of colleagues. It is the saddest and toughest part of this sport.
It always hurts a bit to pick the 'wrong one' in a race as big as the Champion Hurdle, and then, to make matters worse, you go and get beat by the horse you rejected.
The National is about however long it takes to run that race - eight minutes of fame - but champion jockey is about racing 365 days a year. I actually wouldn't swap any of my winners for the National.
A helmet is the most important part of any jockey's kit because of the number of falls you take, so I wouldn't want to be wearing anything on the track unless it had been thoroughly tested.
I never had a written contract, was never officially a stable jockey.
There are many tough sides to being a jockey. Injury is something we all dread, but spending lengthy periods in the bath or the sauna just to shed a few pounds can be an exhausting and draining experience.
When I started off riding, you dream about being champion jockey. Then I wanted to be champion jockey again. Then I wanted to ride 200 winners in a season. Then, when there was a chance of riding more winners than Richard Dunwoody, that was my goal.
By the nature of the sport and the danger we face daily, we are very close knit. Some of us have spent most of our lives together. To give you an example, having spent two decades sitting next to Richard Johnson and seeing him virtually every day, I have probably spent more time with him than I have my family, and he the same.
Really racing is about the horses, not me. You can't do it without the horses, and they are the big players as are the lads who look after them, and they rarely get a mention.
If you break your sternum or your ribs, you can still move. It's going to hurt, but if you can cope with it, you'll do it.
If you ask most trainers who have ridden which pressure is greater - watching your horse or riding it - they will tell you it is harder watching it because you have no control over what happens.
I could never have ridden 4,000 winners without loving my job, and If I ever get to the point where I'm not loving it, I'll stop.
