RACING: It was not much of a race, the one at Warwick in March that robbed Adrian Maguire of the only job he had ever wanted. Not much of a bone, either, one of the smallest of the 200-odd in his body. As he walks in and says hello, you would never guess that he had damaged it. Yet he is very lucky to be walking at all.

Maguire was always a great professional, brave, strong and focused. He was a favourite of the punters from the moment he first appeared on a British course, to ride a winner at the 1991 Cheltenham Festival. No one could remember seeing a young rider with such a cussed will to win.

Twelve months after his British debut at Cheltenham, he won the Gold Cup, and a Hennessy Gold Cup eight months after that. When Tony McCoy started riding winners a few years later, people called him "the new Maguire".

There were injuries, of course. He broke his arm four times, his leg once, and his collarbone more times than he can remember. But when he set out to ride Luzcadou in the Crudwell Cup nine months ago, a week before the Festival, Maguire was riding as well as he ever had, enjoying every minute, and looking forward to a strong book of rides at Cheltenham.

Seven fences from home, Luzcadou fell. Maguire injured a bone in his neck, though at the time he thought it was another broken arm. "I couldn't feel it, it just went numb," he says. "But that was because my neck was broken. My neck, that was just a little bit sore.

"Later, the doctors told me that they couldn't believe I hadn't been paralysed. They couldn't stress enough how lucky I was. From the fall to the paramedics to being handled in hospital and having an operation, if anything had been done differently then I would have been paralysed."

The end often comes quickly for National Hunt jockeys. Even those who walk away unscathed tend to wake up one morning and realise that the passion has gone.

In Maguire, though, it still burned fiercely. Just as he had after a dozen other injuries, he seemed to recover. For weeks, he wore a "halo" neck brace to keep his head rigid, but in time even that was removed. So when, in October, the Jockey Club's senior doctor told him that he would never pass him fit to ride, it was a shock from which he is still struggling to recover.

He finds it hard, not simply because he knew nothing but race-riding, but also because he must find something fresh to do. Maguire knows that if he had been a Flat jockey of similar status and achievement, "I could live off my money". Instead, he is 31, with a wife, two children and a mortgage to pay, and no clear idea of the best way to do it.

"I hope I'll find something that I'm going to be happy doing and successful at, but I haven't found it yet and I'm open to ideas. It's going to have to involve horses and racing somehow. From whatever angle, I don't know."

There is a safety net, of sorts, for riders who are forced into retirement, but nothing to replace the camaraderie of the weighing room, or the buzz of competition. The riders' insurance scheme will pay him for 18 months after an accident, but at only half the normal rate through the three summer months that were once jumping's closed season.

"My bills and my mortgage weren't halved," he says. "I wouldn't say it's difficult, but it's a little bit annoying. If I'd been riding, whether I was in great demand or not, I'd have been making a lot more than I was getting."

Yet there are few real complaints as Maguire reflects on his riding career. He was a genuinely popular man in the weighing room, good-humoured, relaxed, and modest through good times and bad. Jockeys above all know that in adversity you find the measure of the man. And for all the success - a Gold Cup, a Hennessy, two King Georges and more than 1,000 winners in all - Maguire suffered more than his share of bad luck.

They watched as he went blow-for-blow for nine months with Richard Dunwoody in the 1994 jockeys' championship, only to come up three winners short on the final day of the season. A year later, they were locked together again, until Maguire broke his arm when a horse ducked out and smashed through the wing of a hurdle.

"As I was lying on the ground picking my arm up, the first thing that entered my head was, that's it, the championship's gone. I knew my arm was broken." He won the King George on Barton Bank, but then came down at the last when 10 lengths clear on the same horse 12 months later. He missed four Festivals in eight years too, once after the sudden death of his mother in 1995 and three times because of injuries within sight of the meeting. And in March 1998 he suffered such a horrifying fall in front of the stands at Cheltenham that the paramedics put up the green screens around his motionless body.

"I took so many falls and broke so many bones that I think people started to feel sorry for me," he says, "and when that happens, its very hard to get back to where you were. The way I look at it is, it's a broken bone, it will mend and away you go. It wouldn't cost me a thought.

"But other people look at you in a different way. They say, okay, he might still be a good rider, but at the same time, we don't want to see him getting hurt. Once people start to take that view, you're struggling." By the time he fell off Luzcadou, though, everything was back on track. Twelve months ago, on St Stephen's Day, Maguire picked up a late, spare ride on Florida Pearl in the King George at Kempton.

He had never sat on the horse before, yet he rode a brilliant race, kicking on towards the far turn and then holding off Best Mate, the Gold Cup winner three months later, by three-quarters of a length.He admits he will find it hard to watch when Florida Pearl takes on Best Mate again at Kempton on Thursday.

"I've hardly bought a Racing Post in months," he says, "because if I looked at it I'd see what was running and think, I'd be riding that, and I maybe I could be riding that, and then you'd sit down and watch.

"My house (in Faringdon, near Wantage) is always open for the boys coming down who want to stay," he says.

So Maguire will go on looking for something to do, though it will never match the wild fun of riding horses over fences. And for the most part he will search with the same positive outlook that coaxed him back from so many injuries.

"The last thing you want to hear is people saying that they're sorry for you," he says.

"That winds me up. I was out the other evening and I was introduced to some fellow, he said, 'I'm so sorry for you, you've had desperate luck.' That was enough for me. I had to leave his company, because I couldn't speak to him. What was I going to say, that I've been cursed? I steer a different path to that kind of people."

Guardian Service