‘If there’s one thing that survives in Hong Kong, it’s racing’, says horse trader Mark Richards

Sporting life: I was born in Bournemouth (southern England) in 1959. My mother bred dogs – pointers and cocker spaniels – with my godmother. My father was a maintenance engineer at Hurn Airport. At weekends he’d go point-to-point racing – amateur steeplechase – and take me with him in my pushchair. I knew at the age of three that I wanted to be a jockey.

I was an only child. I wasn’t spoilt money wise, but my parents were very loving and supportive. I loved sports and played cricket, football and rugby. When I wasn’t at the racecourse on weekends, I was dragged off to dog shows and learned to dog handle.

The first time I got on a horse was with a friend whose parents ran a riding school. I was nine years old and he was a couple of years older. We rode bareback up a bank and then fell off, laughing. It felt fantastic to gallop across a field.

I was eaten up with horse racing and studied form when I should have been doing homework. I would ask my father to bring the Sporting Life newspaper home and I’d be glued to it. For my 10th birthday, my mother took me to ride her friend’s horse. It was obvious I loved it and her friend said, “You have to give him the chance to do what he wants to do.”

In the saddle: I started riding lessons on Saturday mornings with an eccentric, brilliant horsewoman called Miss Bush. After six months, I would spend therest of the day there mucking out and grooming. I wanted to be with horses all the time. When I was 13, I asked my mother to get the number for racehorse trainer Ian Dudgeon from my godmother. I called him and he suggested I visit with my parents.