How champion jockey Felix Coetzee learned to incorporate Monty's ideas

When you picture the summer break for a top jockey, you don't immediately imagine Felix Coetzee going back to school. But it is a mark of his thirst to improve that, despite three decades as a leading jockey in South Africa and Hong Kong, with championship wins, thousands of races and a long list of victories at the elite level, Coetzee again spent part of his break learning from one of the world's legendary horsemen just how much more there is to learn.

Towards the end of the 2007 season, Coetzee and champion jockey Douglas Whyte were talking about going somewhere to do some western or rodeo-style riding and he admits that first visit to Flag is Up Farms in California with Whyte had almost an element of the movie, City Slickers, about it. "I found Monty Roberts' course on the internet and we both thought it looked interesting. Really, we had been hoping for something different on horseback, but it went way beyond our expectations," he says.

Paul Cole's String at exercise Whatcombe