A lot has been written and said in the press about the current crop of National Hunt jockeys and the possibility of Sean Bowen breaking some of A. P. McCoy’s records in the future.

The overall standard of jockeys is solid, but if I had to choose the best at the moment, I would side with Harry Cobden. He is a very natural horseman and has improved significantly over the last couple of seasons.

Sean Bowen is also a talented rider who performs consistently well and likely benefits from having no major weight issues, as he is not particularly tall.

With regard to whether he will break any of McCoy’s records, I have my doubts. A. P. McCoy was a one-off. He managed to avoid injury most of the time and rode plenty of winners when he possibly shouldn’t have been riding, as he had been injured but still somehow passed the doctor.

The medical side is very strict now, if you have any slight injuries, you normally get stood down for a few days.

Among the current crop of jockeys, Harry Skelton is a decent rider, but in my opinion he often gives his horses too much to do. He frequently sits at the rear or adopts a hold-up tactic, which makes his style feel a bit one-dimensional. A few others, Brian Hughes is still a very good jockey, then you have several who are decent riders, some who are riding very good horses, and are what I would call competent riders.

Nico de Boinville would fall into that category. Many of the Nicky Henderson rides are “point and steer” jobs!

I was talking to Declan Murphy recently about the riders from our era compared with today’s jockeys. He shared the same view: in the 1980s and 1990s there were some exceptionally good jump jockeys. The best I think I rode against was John Francome — a brilliant rider, always very calm in the weighing room, almost as if he didn’t care, though of course he did. Richard Dunwoody was another outstanding jockey, followed by several others such as Peter Scudamore, Hywel Davies, Graham McCourt, Steve Smith Eccles, Chris Grant, Jamie Osborne, Graham Bradley, and Declan himself, who was unfortunately injured in his prime.