I saw a picture of Desert Orchid in the paper the other day, still full of life at 27. Now that's what you call a special horse. He won that Irish National by 12 lengths carrying top weight and hitting the last fence an awful wallop. Not many horses would manage that, I can tell you.

I'll be on Our Ben in tomorrow's race and like Desert Orchid, he'll have to carry top weight to win. But Desert Orchid was a Gold Cup winner, my lad's only a novice. To me, top weight for Our Ben is very harsh on the horse. I think the Irish handicapper has been a bit hard on the Irish novices because he has them all pretty highlyrated. I hope he's right, obviously, but I think for what Our Ben has actually achieved on the track, he's about 10lb higher than he should be.

Now, maybe he's on the right mark - it's not an exact science and you can never tell these things definitively.

There's every chance that the handicapper sees massive potential in Our Ben and maybe he's right. But I think for a horse that's had four runs over fences and has only won once in that time, this is a very tall order.

Dun Doire will be running off 11st7lb and he has an outstanding chance. Numbersixvalverde won this race last year after winning the Thyestes in Gowran Park earlier in the season and Dun Doire looks wellplaced to have a go at doing likewise.

Another horse I've ridden lately - and won on, come to that - is GVA Ireland and he's in with a good chance here thanks to the weight. And actually, if you look well down the weights, right down the bottom is Frances Crowley's horse Monteray Bay. Now, I know that novices have a great record in the race but to ask Our Ben to beat those three when they're so well handicapped in comparison is, I reckon, going to be too much.

As for me, I've slapped myself about the face a bit and moved on from the Grand National. I knew at the time that what I was feeling in the immediate aftermath of the race wouldn't last too long and it didn't. I stayed Saturday night in Liverpool, flew home early Sunday morning and went to Tramore where I rode a double. Nothing like it.

You have to make yourself get over disappointments like that. It took me a couple of days but I soon realised that it's a horse race, not the end of the world. Nobody died.

The day before the race, I went to visit the cancer unit of Alder Hay Children's Hospital in Liverpool.

There are kids there from six months to 12 years of age staring death in the face. And I lost a horse race?

When I was a teenager, I played a lot of rugby. I loved the game actually - I was a nippy little scrum-half, if you can believe that. One of the things that always struck me about rugby is that when a match finished, no matter whether you won or got hockeyed, you stood up, shook hands and clapped the other team off the pitch.

Even if it was a final, even if you got robbed. That's what you had to do.

It sounds a bit corny but I actually liked the idea of it. I guess it taught you how to lose, how to be gracious in defeat or at least how to try. Jockeys, even the best ones, even the Tony McCoys and Kieren Fallons, all end their careers having lost more races than they won. Learning how to lose is what gets you through.

Not that I want to get too used to it. The end of the season is upon us.

I have only one day off over the next fortnight and that's the day before Punchestown. There are four massive meetings coming and myself and Barry Geraghty will go down to the wire for the Irish jockeys' championship.

How could you be down in the mouth with all that to look forward to?