This hardly needs saying but it's different for humans.

If you or I broke a leg playing football, it'd be off to hospital, get an anaesthetic, get a pin and a plate put in, get a cast on and lie in bed keeping the ankle above the knee for six weeks. Give or take a few more weeks of putting weight on it before the cast is taken off, that's about it. Good as new after three months or so.

You can't do all that with a horse. People have been treating horses for all these years and they haven't worked out a way of saving one with a broken leg. You might be able to fit the pin, the plate and the cast but it's more complicated than that. For a start, the period coming out of anaesthetic is a very dangerous time for a horse. They don't really know what's going on and they can fall and flail about the place. They have to be put in these big padded rooms so they don't hurt themselves. You can't make them lie in bed with the ankle above the knee and keeping the horse from putting weight on the leg is impossible.

A horse with a broken leg isn't like a puppy that you can coax back to full health. You can't suspend them from the roof because their insides are too soft to support them; you can't keep them lying on the ground because while they can stand on three legs, they need all four to get up and any effort in that direction would just break the leg again.

The sad reality is that you just can't fix a broken leg on a horse, the only thing you can do is to put them out of their misery as quickly and humanely as possible.

People looking in from the outside might have looked at Cheltenham last week and heard that nine horses were killed and thought it was terrible. And it was, no question. But I promise you, however bad the people looking in felt about it, it was nothing compared to the way the people involved felt.

Willie Mullins had Holy Orders and Mr Babbage both die on him in one afternoon.

To the outside world, that's just two names on a racecard but for Willie and his yard, that's double the heartache.

It's two empty boxes on the way home, two empty stables the next day, two sets of owners who've lost their pride and joy, two grooms who've lost their favourite horse.

You have to understand the mentality of someone working in a yard. Nobody's in it for the money . . . they'd be much better off working in a factory if they were. It's a labour of love. When I was a kid, I dreamed of being a successful jockey but I knew that if it turned out that I wasn't, I'd still be working in a yard in some shape or form when I grew up.

That's why grooms work there. The love of the place, the love of the horses. These animals are basically the grooms' pets. They feed them, clean them out, ride them out, keep them stocked up with water, brush them over, everything. They'll spend long stretches alone with the horse, probably find themselves talking to the horse at times. Then they send them off to the races and just hope that they come back.

When they don't, it's desperate. If I'm on a horse that falls and breaks its leg and we're there waiting for the vet to come, I'll often see the groom come running down towards us. If I can at all, I never let them near the horse.

They don't want to see their horse dying. It's just too painful.

Why does it happen? To me, it's all random. You can plan for eventualities and take all the precautions possible but you're still never going to prevent it. It's the same with people. How did Beano McDonald break his leg in Croke Park that time without anyone laying a finger on him? I was watching the Commonwealth Games the other morning and two lads broke down on the longjump runway. Two prime athletes in the shape of their lives and they broke down running along on their own. It's a fact of life. It happens.

Cheltenham held eight meetings in a row before last week without a fatality. It's just awful luck that there were nine in one week, the one week when the whole world is tuning in. There's little point looking beyond coincidence for the high number.

For example, I see there's talk of getting rid of the fourmile novice chase for amateur riders. I don't agree with that at all. This is the oldest race at the festival, 135 years old this year. It isn't a race with a particularly notorious record of horse deaths but because three died this year, they might do away with it.

And why? Because amateurs are riding? These people are amateurs only in the sense that they make no money out of race-riding. But they work in yards, they ride out, they know their horses better than anyone. Those three horses didn't die because amateurs were riding them, they died because the luck wasn't with them when they fell. You can't blame the jockeys . . . if my luck hadn't held, Kauto Star could just as easily have joined them in the Champion Chase.

You can't blame Cheltenham either. The support staff there are second to none.

I remember a horse I was riding in the Pillar Chase in 2003 for Nicky Henderson called Bacchanal. We fell at the fourth last with a circuit to go and the horse broke his hind leg. By the time the rest of the field was halfway round the second circuit, the vet had been in, the screens had been up and the horse had been put down. The horse was in pain for the shortest time possible because the procedures the racecourse have in place are geared towards making the horses as comfortable as possible. The horses come first.

It's sad that they can't all live to be ripe old ages. You try your best for them but the reality is often a sad one. I've never forgotten that pony I had when I was 14 and I never will. She was the first but there have been several since and I know I'm probably not going to be lucky enough to get to the end of my life without it happening a few more times.

It's sad but it's the way things are.