Swan book is a banker bet

If there is a more recognisable racing face to the general public than Charlie Swan, it's difficult to name him. And it's not hard to see why that is.

Eight times champion jump jockey, twice the leading jockey at the world famous Cheltenham Festival, rider of champions such as Danoli and Viking Flagship and far and away the most successful Irish-based jump jockey ever with over 1,000 winners. In the toughest game of all, Swan, still only 29, is as close to being a living legend as makes no difference.

What the public have warmed to though is how the private school educated son of a British army officer has remained such an affable, unpretentious figure despite his enormous success and enormous talent.

In a sport where boorishness is so often mistaken for self confidence, contemparies without a fraction of Swan's ability or achievement have quickly developed delusions of fleeting grandeur.

All of which is to Swan's credit but, in terms of a biography, it presents something of a problem. In a world where the sensational and the sordid is peddled so successfully, a biography of a wonderful talent and a so obviously pleasant, happily married, successful young man is not an obvious candidate for leaping off the bookshelves.

That is the problem that faces biographer Michael Clower and he manfully faces it. As a chronicle of Swan's career, "Champion Char- lie" is comprehensive and there are some illuminating passages that show how Clower gained his subject's confidence.

Particularly illuminating is how Swan suffered, and to some extent still does, with a stammer, one of the most confidence draining blights one can imagine. One passage painfully recounts how an eight-year-old Swan had to read from the Bible in front of his entire school, which he managed to achieve by learning the passage off by heart for days beforehand.

That as much as anything hints at the toughness and determination behind the niceness and this comprehensive account captures this side of the man well. That and it's subject's enduring popularity should indeed see it leap off the bookshelves as if Swan himself was on its back.