National hero

A SEVEN-year-old boy has become Britain’s youngest ever jockey, months after fighting off a killer lung infection.

Freddie Fletcher, from Steventon in Oxfordshire, was rushed to hospital last year with swelling on the brain and a collapsed lung. But he rode his pony Tommy to fourth place in Sunday’s Isle of Wight under-15s Grand National.

Freddie’s mother Hannah Fletcher, 31, said: “It’s been difficult but Tommy was the thing that kept him going.”