LETTER OF THE WEEK

YOUR excellent article on David Tatlow (30 April) took me back to my childhood. I rode as soon as I could sit up and David was my idol. I knew little of his showing career, but his point-to-point achievements filled me with awe, especially when he won on Barley Bree (Sam) in an exhilarating finish.

In an article in H&H from 1995, Sam proved to be the gutsiest horse his jockey was ever to meet, with David reminiscing that the pair “could not have gone faster if they had taken the fences away”. He summed up his relationship with

Sam by saying, “I loved him because he would have died for me.”

These are great memories of a time when a fouryear-old girl could hack on the road safely and when teenage dreams were influenced by a great horseman, not the Kardashians. Anne Hutchinson Preston, Lancs

The writer of letter of the week wins a bottle of Champagne Taittinger