REACHING three-score-years-and-ten may be reason enough for most people to adopt an armchair by the fire with pipe and slippers at close quarters. But not if you're Jim Dent.

When Jim's 70th birthday came round last week, he marked the occasion by doing what he'd done on the same special day last year, the year before that and, for that matter, in all previous years since he retired.

He dusted off his crash helmet and rode out for his old boss, Mick Easterby.

"I could do with a double-brandy!" joked the popular veteran after giving a three-year-old by Primitive Rising a canter last Tuesday morning.

"I'll be stiff tomorrow, but it's worth it. It's something I love and something I've done every year on my birthday since I finished."

Dent served for 18 years - "a bloody long time"- as head-lad to Easterby and well remembers riding against his former boss, who comes from the same vintage, in point-to-points when both were fearless teenagers.

Jim, who rode 49 winners before eventually being "crocked" in a fall in a hunter-chase at Stratford, still pops in to the Easterby fold to do odd jobs around the yard. "It's all I know," says this hardy horseman, who lives at Sheriff Hutton, and who attended the Christmas party for retired stable-staff, organized by Racing Welfare, at Ryedale Indoor Bowling Club in Norton this week.

Updated: 12:28 Thursday, December 20, 2001