Eddery rides into the sunset

Pat Eddery brought down the curtain on his glittering career on a losing note at Doncaster today, but he still received the biggest cheer ever to greet a beaten odds-on chance as he returned on third-placed Gamut after the CIU Serlby Stakes.

The 11-times champion, who announced his impending retirement in the summer, was beaten on his four other rides, too, as he said goodbye to Britain’s racecourses.

He ends his 36-year career, during which he became one of the world’s greatest jockeys, with 4,632 victories on the domestic front.

As the 51-year-old waited for what was to be a chaotic send-off from his colleagues, he said: “It would have been nice to end on a winner, but it was not to be and that’s racing. You win some and you lose some.

“There have been plenty of winners along the way. Today I was happy coming into the straight on Gamut, but the winner went and my fellow could not pick up at all on the sticky ground.”

When asked if he had any regrets about retiring, he went on: “None at all, I have made up my mind and I won’t be riding on the all-weather at Wolverhampton on Monday I can tell you”!

As he waited to be presented with a memento and bottles of champagne, his fellow-jockeys held him shoulder-high and peppered him with party streamers.

Frankie Dettori then opened one of the bottles of bubbly and sprayed him.

In the melee one of the jockeys’ valets, Dave Currie, was bundled down the steps of the podium, but he took it all in good part.

And veteran George Duffield, seeing the celebratory mayhem, quipped: “When I retire I’m doing it over the phone!”

Michael Stoute, who trains Gamut, said: “It would have been nice to send Pat off with a winner, but fairytales don’t happen too often. But we have enjoyed a lot of success together including some very big wins with Colorspin and Milligram.”

And he added: “What punters will miss is that everything he rode got a ride.”

Kieren Fallon was presented with his championship trophy and put the cat among the pigeons when he said: “I think he will be back!

“He will have a couple of weeks off and then I think he will change his mind - he can’t give up like this.

“He is riding too well to pack in and if I was a betting man I would have my maximum on him returning. Everyone wants him to ride for them and I would love to see him back.”

Dettori said: “It is a sad day for racing, but we have given Pat a great send-off. It is goodbye to a racing legend and we will all miss him.”

Eddery, who could be in action abroad this year before he quits for good, did not emerge again to face the media scrum after he went back to the changing room.

Colleague Dale Gibson explained: “We have cut his underpants in two and cut up his socks and his scarf – I think he had had it for 20 years! Oh, and we put cream cakes in his shoes.”

But is it the end? Eddery’s wife Carolyn said: “It would have been nice to go out on a winner, but that is how things go. It has been Pat’s own decision to retire, it is his life and you never know.

“If he wants to come back he can. If he wakes up one day and says he want to come back, then there is nothing to stop him.”

The stewards added a surreal note when they cautioned Eddery for using his whip with excessive frequency on Chubbes in the BOC Sureflow Nursery and warned him about how he used it in future.