Winston had just taken over the lead in the race to be Britain's champion flat jockey and was four winners clear of his closest rival and compatriot, Jamie Spencer. Like most of the winners that had propelled him to this unexpectedly lofty position, he was riding a moderate horse in a nothing race at a run-of-themill track.

"My horse, Pearl's A Singer, just slipped on the bend, " he says, thinking back. "I might have been all right but a horse behind kicked me. I wasn't knocked out, I felt the pain."

Dealing with pain is something Robert Winston has learned to live with. The physical aches and bruises are healed now. All that remains is the worst pain of all: the pain of what might have been. "It's frustrating, I was getting support from lots of trainers, and some big race rides from trainers like Michael Bell and Michael Stoute. Instead of a kick in the jaw it was like a kick in the balls, " he says.

Winston carries his testicular discomfort into the new flat season, which got underway a couple of weeks ago. He has to start up the hill all over again, still without the backing of a major stable.

He has lots in common with his championship rival, Jamie Spencer, and, at the same time, nothing at all. Both are 26 years old, Irish, close friends and recently became parents. Each one is expert at making up the mind of half a ton of excitable horseflesh in the crucible of a 40 mile-perhour finish. That's largely where the similarities end.

When Spencer was squinting through his baptismal robes at his billionaire godfather, John Magnier, Winston was cutting his first teeth in Finglas West, a sprawling council estate on Dublin's northside. From the age of 10 he worked in the grocery shop that his father had built onto the side of the house. The only horses in his childhood were the piebalds and ponies that obstructed the view from his family home to the top of the landfill site on Dunsink Lane, and the halting sites that populate its lower slopes.

When Tommy Stack was legging the 17-year-old Spencer up on a classic winner, Winston was an anonymous apprentice, mucking out ordinary horses at an unfashionable yards. When Jamie Spencer was awarded his lucrative contract to ride for Coolmore, Robert Winston was scratching for rides as a freelance jockey in the north of England. Yet when he rode Pearl's A Singer into that bend at Ayr last summer, Winston had worked himself up to the head of the list, cream of the crop, king of the hill.

His journey began in earnest when, at 15, he packed his bags and headed to RACE, the government-funded academy for aspiring jockeys on the Curragh. Despite coming from a working class nursery of soccer and GAA stars, he was sure that four-legged athletes were to be in his destiny.

"It was always just horses with me, " he admits. "Horses and motorbikes, anything that was to do with speed. I was always on the ponies . . . and the piebalds as well."

Despite being a city boy without a 'horsey' background, he found his feet at the academy. His more experienced, mostly country, classmates never intimidated him.

"There were a few Jack the Lads alright . . . overnight jockeys, but I just kept me head down and worked hard, " Winston recalls. "I knew what I wanted and nobody really interfered with that. I went to the gym a lot and never smoked or drank. When I finished the year there I was awarded the saddle for being the top apprentice."

Winston continued his development with Martin Brassil, primarily a trainer of jumpers. After his spell there he moved to Richard Fahey's yard at Malton in Yorkshire to continue his apprenticeship. "I got valuable experience with Martin and I rate him really highly for any young apprentice starting off, he spends the time with you and gives great advice. But Martin didn't have many flat horses so there were no opportunities, " he says.

He rode his first winner for Fahey, The Butterwick Kid, in April 1997, beating an 11times champion jockey in a photo finish in the process.

"Beating Pat Eddery was a big boost and things really progressed from there, " he says. "I was really keen and determined. I rode my second winner the same week. I rode 22 winners that season then 40 and 50 the years after that. I won the Lester award for top apprentice in 1999 and lost my claim the same year."

The next few years were a catalogue of brilliant riding and self-destructive alcohol induced bedlam. He lost his job with Fahey, but still rode plenty of winners including his first Group One on Magical Romance in the Cheveley Park Stakes for Brian Meehan. He has publicly acknowledged that at the same time "he was drinking himself to death". He has used his forced time off to get help with this and is now living life as confidently as he rides horses.

"That stuff is all in the past now. I have moved on from there, " he declares.

His desire to be champion jockey this season is something he definitely hasn't moved on from, but he is realistic about his chances: "I was getting rides from all those southern trainers when most of my contacts were up north, " he reveals. "Because I was out for so long they got fixed up with other jockeys who jumped into my boots.

It's hard to get back on them horses again but I take what I can get wherever I can get it.

But if I am still in with a chance by August I'll go for it."

Winston is delighted with the support he is getting from a particular hero of his, Kieren Fallon. There are close parallels between Fallon and Winston in how their careers have developed, including the spells of over indulgence, and both are currently helping police with inquiries into race fixing allegations. Winston asserts there "is nothing to worry about". Fallon was emphatic in his assessment of Winston's title chances in Britain earlier this season.

"Robert Winston will win the title, he's different class. You can judge a good jockey by the ones who don't have to use their whip. Robert doesn't. He's very strong and balanced, " Fallon said. Winston warmly welcomes this encouragement. "Kieren is a jockey I have a lot of respect for and for him to look on me like this is a great boost for your confidence. He is very clever, very shrewd in a race and has a great eye for a horse . . . and a jockey, " he acknowledges.

Now that his jaw, and his life, are on the mend, the last piece of the jigsaw for Winston is to put back in place the contacts he had carefully built up before his accident. He is currently riding work, and races, for Michael Stoute who has yet to appoint a stable jockey to replace Fallon. Stoute supported Winston through some of his difficulties and Winston would love the chance to repay him on a more regular basis.

In the meantime he continues to doggedly grind out winners as a freelance on whatever he can, wherever he can, putting himself in position for the big-time opportunity he feels is just around the corner. "I have no classic rides lined up yet, " he says. "But whatever opportunity comes along I'll grab. I'll grab it with both hands."