IT’S been a funny old racing week. And following the strangest months we’ve had to navigate since racing ceased in the pandemic lockdown. At times, it didn’t take much to get us down.

Royal Ascot last Saturday gave hopes that much can still be salvaged from this season, good horses lifted the spirits and sent us looking forward to their next clashes.

Many of the famous races were moved around last week but from the excellent TV coverage and high-class racing, so much seemed as is should be for mid-June.

The meeting and Saturday in particular offered a lovely mix of ‘new’ winners and still brought the old stars to the fore. We saw how much a winner meant to a jockey like Kevin Stott after his Diamond Jubilee win on Hello Youmzain, one of the highlights of Saturday.

Then came Wednesday when the news broke of the sudden and tragic death of Liam Treadwell. It put things in a whole new perspective. Treadwell had spoken on his mental health issues before, and had given a glimpse of the intensity that winning and losing meant to someone for whom that was a daily part of their life.

The tributes came with shock, respect and a great fondness for the Grand National-winning jockey. You’d even think why did he need to do this?

In the dismay there was a renewed plea for people to get help if they felt any mental health issues – when there’s so much of it available now. But you have to question if we can do more and try to prevent everything getting to a crisis point.

Mental illness is a disease that can get a grip just like a cancer, but we don’t always treat it like that. It can be there undiagnosed, eating away at a person in the same way. Treadwell had not been suffering in silence – he had spoken of his troubles publicly before.

I have seen at first-hand how someone struggled to the very end to fight cancer and at the same time see someone succumb to mental illness and depression and give in. Their constant anguish was greater than the pain passed on to those left behind after they chosen to take their own life.

How do we get ahead of this curve that is taking so many, and mostly men, down to despair?

Looking at Kevin Stott openly shedding tears of joy on his success maybe offered a clue. The win mattered – how great it was seeing the emotion. But if the highs give rise to that emotion, what do the lows do?

Take the whole show back 20 years; I had a look at the 2000 St James’s Palace Stakes when among the jockeys riding in it were Mick Kinane, Kieron Fallon, Richard Quinn, Richard Hughes, George Duffield. Were they tougher men? Some had their issues too but we didn’t talk about mental health or have the help available then that we have now. Yet the illness is getting worse.

Perhaps it wasn’t needed. Go back 30 years and it would be a sign of weakness for a sportsman to cry, either in joy of success or in disappointment or admit losing races was something that caused stress and affected health.

Remember that line Frances Crowley spoke in an interview a year or so ago – that Pat Smullen was actually a happier man while fighting cancer than he was while riding big winners.

Deaths in recent times from mental illness and depression of many hugely likeable horsemen like Willie Codd, Richard Woollacott, James Banks, Michael Curran and now Liam Treadwell must make us think more.

We are a different, more fragile breed these days. The ‘it’s good to talk’ slogans are not enough. There are more people to talk to than ever before yet mental health is still a huge concern.

While we see cancer as a progressive killer disease, mental illness is in the same category. From what you can determine from the recent tragedies, the talking came too late, the disease was spreading already.

We have to work harder and be more alert so that it be identified before it has taken hold.