First Steps is quick to reward Smart backers

The Sil Sila story reads like a fairytale, which ended in Classic glory. The attractive filly came straight to Smart's yard back in the Nineties instead of the Tattersalls yearling sales because of her only flaw, an offset knee. This did not stop her from moving quite fast, however, and in her third year she ran well in Newbury's Fred Darling and the Musidora at York to suggest she might be worth taking to the Prix de Diane at Chantilly.

The complete outsider of the field for the French Oaks in 1996, she sparkled under Cash Asmussen to slam a high-class field. Sil Sila is now at stud in Ireland where she is proving a perfect broodmare and has a colt foal by Desert King. "I haven't seen him yet, but I would like to think he will come here," said Smart, a former jump jockey with six notice chase wins on Corbiere before that horse's Aintree Grand National win of 1983.

Smart also won the Massey-Ferguson Gold Cup on Bueche Girod and the Midlands Grand National on Watafella until a very bad fall, resulting in a fractured skull and a shattered leg, ended his 200-winner riding career. He had answered an advert in Horse and Hound from Jenny Pitman and ended up as an amateur rider with her, the Barnsley boy's mother Martha taking a job in a shirt factory to support him until he eventually turned pro.

When he started training, Smart, 44, sent out 10 winners in his first season, but then his fortunes took a dive due to divorce and the spectre of bankruptcy was looming. But he categorically refused to go bust. "I went round to see every single creditor in person and said, 'If you just sit still, I'll pay' - and I did."

Now safely ensconced in Sherwood Stables down Folly Road in the Berkshire training centre, he has not forgotten those dark days and the people who stuck by him. "I'm dyslexic and Jenny Pitman paid for me to have lessons to read properly," said Smart. "And when I was really struggling with £5 in my pocket to last the week, her sister, Mandy Bowlby, used to say, 'Come over and have some dinner. You can go straight home afterwards if you don't feel like talking'.

"One day I would like to give somebody else the support they gave me."

First Steps, who runs in the penultimate race at Folkestone today, may not be another Sil Sila but she has the fighting qualities of her trainer, and the Smart money is on her providing a few more wins to make it the best ever season for the son of a miner at Monckton Colliery.

Father Don once swore he would rather eat grass than let Bryan follow him down the pit and his boy finally found there was light at the end of the tunnel.