AH shure, you’d love to think it, wouldn’t yah?”, was the answer.

The question was “So it’s safe to say we’ll see you here next year?” posed by Mick Fitzgerald as he concluded his ITV interview with Barry Geraghty aboard Saint Roi after winning the County Hurdle in Cheltenham last March.

Little did we know the twinkle in the eye wasn’t just from the joy of winning. Geraghty knew it would be his last Festival winner.

The interview had begun with Geraghty explaining. “It’s what you dream of, you come here hoping for one winner, one is all you want. You are in a privileged position to ride such good horses for good people. It’s a pleasure and it’s a fun game, it is sport.”

It would sit perfectly as a fitting summary of what it meant to be a top National Hunt jockey.

Saint Roi was his fifth Festival winner of this year, and he was only beaten for leading rider by the might of Mullins feeding Paul Townend more placings. And it was one of 43 winnes in total at the Cotswolds in March for Geraghty.

And funnily enough, though he may have thought it at the time, that Cheltenham winner was not Geraghty’s last appearance on TV as a jockey.

The final one showed the other side of the coin, broadcast recently in the BBC Ambulance series, Geraghty was the stricken rider being attended to as he had his boot removed from a twisted leg after a fall at Aintree last year. The nurse in the front of the ambulance googling his name – “he won the Grand National!”

As McCoy and Walsh had told us before him, it’s not the pain of the fall and broken bones. It’s the added pain of what you miss and, for Geraghty, with a steel contraption on his leg all last summer, it was not just the rides but a piece of normal life surpressed, and then the pain of recovery to get fit to do it all again, knowing that the older you get, the trade off for the good days lessens a little with each passing year.

If Geraghty was an equal among the ‘big three’ in the saddle, he was the odd one out, in the best of ways, from the trio.

A.P. wanted to win every race, Ruby wanted to win all the big races, Barry, you felt, wanted to win the big race but if it didn’t happen, shure there’ll be another one along soon. He was another who cheerily quoted the “pressure is for tyres” line. And on the big days, even the once in a while punters put their trust in him which also demonstrated his wide appeal.

In an interview during the week he said it was “too much choice to try and pick one” and again it shows that there were so many big winners and great days. The Grand National, McCoy’s last box ticked did matter most… “thankful I got that one – a massive box ticked.”

And in that interview he also recalled “I loved a good two-mile chaser. I just loved over the last two or three in a two-mile chase.”

The outstanding ‘win at all’ costs rides come quick to mind when you recall McCoy and Walsh, but you often forget that Geraghty, with the bit between his teeth, so to speak, was a match for anyone.

Bobs Worth was not going to win the Gold Cup before three out, Riverside Theatre was not going to win the Ryanair three out.

That Ryanair ride could have been pulled from the A.P. McCoy library of making a horse win despite itself.

And Champ’s RSA Chase win this year was as good as any to hoist high as the encore before you departed the stage.

“How many winners did you ride?” is used as a dismissal if you give an opinion on a race. And you could throw it out to assess a departing jockey’s career too. How many? There were 1,920 to be exact. And the next ‘must have’, “did you win the Grand National?”

Add in 43 Cheltenham winners, 121 Grade 1 wins, two Gold Cups, four Champion Hurdles, five Champion Chases, two champion jockey titles, Grand National and Irish Grand National. Two outstanding chasers in Moscow Flyer and Sprinter Sacre. It’s a pretty impressive haul, and he bows out with a smile at 40.