Racing: Jim Culloty, who rode Best Mate to three consecutive Gold Cup victories between 2002 and 2004 and also won the Grand National on Bindaree, has announced his retirement from race-riding less than a week after a heavy fall at Killarney left him "dazed and seeing double".

Culloty, who is only 31 and recently became a father for the first time, made his decision although Best Mate is due to return to the racecourse within the next four months. He said:

"That fall gave me a bit of a fright and it probably meant that it was at least a dozen times in the last year that I've been dazed and had double vision after a fall.

"I think that if you keep on having falls like that, then in the end you're going to finish with nothing left of your brain."

Culloty had been planning to ride as a freelance during the coming jumps season after ending his long-standing retainer as Henrietta Knight's stable jockey. Though he was no longer formally attached to the yard, he had also been guaranteed the ride on Best Mate.

"I'd been looking forward to riding as a freelance and I was still going to be on some very good horses," he added.

"But I've had it on my mind for the last week, weighing up all the pros and cons.

"In some ways, it's easier to keep on riding when you get to a point like this, because finding the right time to give up is always the most difficult thing, and there are a lot of good reasons to keep going. I'd been intending to keep riding for another two, three, maybe even four years.

"But I've been having a few injuries and I was finding all the travelling harder. I've had about 40 winners a year for the last 10 or 11 years, so that's almost 500 winners in all, and I've been lucky enough to ride some very good horses. What it comes down to is that I just think I've had enough."

Culloty rode his first winner, Karicleigh Boy, in a National Hunt Flat race at Exeter in 1994. His three Cheltenham Gold Cup victories on Best Mate, which matched the great Arkle's record in the race in the mid-1960s, will inevitably be seen as the pinnacle of his career, but he also made the most of a chance ride on Bindaree in the 2002 Grand National after Carl Llewellyn, suffered an injury in the weeks before the race.

Guardian Service