Racing: Outsider is now a firm favourite

Sanders, the boy with no racing background, now sits on Fallon's shoulder in title race

Seb Sanders bounces out of the weighing-room at Epsom, clutching a glass of iced water and wearing a disarmingly broad smile. Six rides have yielded a winner, a second and a tailed off and the former champion apprentice has lost four pounds from a frame which does not require much paring down. "Real hot out there," he says, the Birmingham accent almost as thick as the late afternoon air.

Sanders is 30 now, but has the looks of a schoolboy. He laughs readily and well he might. A treble at Ayr on Friday took him to 88 winners, his best ever in a turf season– from March to November. More significantly, it took him closer to securing a place in the very top ranks of a profession which does not readily open its doors to outsiders. Kieren Fallon and Richard Hughes have set the pace at the top of the jockeys' championship, but, for much of the summer, Sanders has been leading the chasing group. Yet most would struggle to put a face to the name on the racecard.

"It's no fluke," he says. "I thought a dip might come in the season. But, surprisingly, it's not happened. I'm still clocking up the winners, getting on some nice horses and a fair few favourites. Before this year, the facts would say that I've not got the ammunition to be the champion jockey, but this year things have taken off and I'm coming to believe that I've got a chance. Not this year, but in the next few years perhaps. I've got a chance." He repeats the phrase as if convincing himself of the truth.

Back at his yard in Tamworth, Bryan McMahon needs rather less persuasion. McMahon is not the type to make bold pronouncements about the future, but he can recall the fresh-faced kid who first appeared on his doorstep 14 years ago. Sanders barely sat on a horse for the first two months of his apprenticeship, but when he did, McMahon, a horseman of the old school, knew he had unearthed a gem. "It's not something you can put your finger on," he says. "Some of them just don't look right. But Seb was always well balanced and seemed to be part of the horse. He just looked comfortable."

At the time, McMahon had a horse called Emotive, an ageing handicapper bequeathed him by Willie Haggas. Haggas had promised to buy the McMahons a case of champagne if the horse ever got back on the racetrack. Sanders, whose sole experience of riding had been pony-trekking for an afternoon on a family holiday, was educated on Emotive and the horse not only earnt the champagne, but was patched up expertly enough to win a race or two.

McMahon was a tough taskmaster. But Joy McMahon, Bryan's wife, came to regard Seb as part of the family. "Our son, Edward, was too big to be a jockey," she says, "so I suppose we tended to push Seb because he was almost a replacement. He lived locally and would come every day with that cheeky grin. He was a devil for being late. Bryan used to say he had an encyclopaedia of excuses. But he learnt to ride here." Though not well enough to convince the head of the British Racing School at Newmarket. "A lovely lad," was the end of term report on Sanders' 10-week stay at the school. "But he'll never make a jockey." Now the BRS claim credit for Sanders' success.

"Until the age of about 15, I wanted to play football for Birmingham City," Sanders says. "I always thought I was a pretty good player, but obviously I wasn't. I had no racing background. I have a dad and a step-dad, one works for Rover and the other is a gardener. My mum decorates wedding cakes. I was the sort of kid who would try things – I'd do karate and then get bored after a couple of weeks. But it was strange. I never got bored of being with horses." His first winner came from his first ride, Band On The Run, at Pontefract. His family were there and backed the horse at 14-1. "I thought it was pretty easy, this," Sanders says. "And they did too." A few weeks later, back at Pontefract, Sanders was making the running when a voice from the inside rail behind him called for room.

"I looked to me inside and my horse drifted off the fence," Sanders recalls. "I let the favourite straight up the inside and he bolted home and I got pushed to the middle and wiped out the rest of the field. I got a right old rollicking."

After seven years with McMahon, Sanders moved to Reg Akehurst's yard where, in 1995, he became champion apprentice. By tradition, champion apprentices sink in the big pool. But the following year, his first as a professional freelance, Sanders rode 97 winners, many of them on unglamorous afternoons on the all-weather. "Remember, Seb," Joy McMahon would say to him each morning, "do what you're told." But he also watched how the top boys, Pat Eddery and Richard Quinn, conducted themselves with owners and trainers.

A job as second jockey to Sir Mark Prescott moved Sanders into a higher league. With the guidance of Keith Bradley, his agent, Sanders gained a reputation for hard work and sound horsemanship. He did what he was told and acted like a pro. He rode in Japan and Dubai, became stronger, made contacts and improved his style until he was readily booked for spare rides by trainers as influential as John Dunlop and Ian Balding.

Ask him, though, if he is ready for one of the big jobs now, one that will overnight bracket him with Fallon, Kinane and Dettori, put him on Classic winners, and his reply is diplomacy itself. "I've already got a big job. I'm working for a top-class trainer. People have that perception of Kinane or Kieren or Johnny Murtagh or Frankie riding Group winners and it's a little unfair. I ride as well as anybody, though I'm not wanting to blow my own trumpet. I think I can hold my own in any company. It's a case of waiting for the opportunities and taking them when they come along."

McMahon believes his former apprentice is riding as well as any of them this season. His victory on Unleash at Leicester last month was worthy of Fallon at his strongest, even down to the three-day ban which followed. There are few stronger in the finish nowadays and few prepared to give more for their money, at Sandown yesterday, Yarmouth or Folkestone. Sanders has taken the hard road up and, now the summit is in sight, is not about to forget how far he has travelled.