“I was keen, mad keen. I had to be,” William Buick says as he remembers how, as a boy in Oslo, he was desperate to ride racehorses before school every freezing day. Buick, who has just become Britain’s champion jockey for a second successive year, would cycle to a racecourse despite the brutal winter mornings. “I was about 12 and I’d be riding out for Wido Neuroth, who is the biggest trainer in Norway, and Scandinavia.
“One morning it was pitch black and my bicycle tyres were making that creaking noise you get when you hit compact snow. It was below -20C soon after six and I thought: ‘Wow, this feels cold.’ I got to the racecourse and thought: ‘Gosh, it’s quiet this morning, there’s no one out.’ Wido’s office was above the stables and he said: ‘William, when it’s -20C, we don’t ride out. It’s too cold, even for us.’”
