It may safely be said, however, that this is not the most remarkable thing about Brian Toomey.

The most remarkable thing about Toomey is that he is still in the land of the living.

At a time when recent incidents in both cycling and boxing have reminded us how dangerous sport can be, his story is well worth retelling.

Toomey is a jump jockey. (Read the next few paragraphs and then marvel at the tense of that verb: Toomey is a jump jockey.)

At a race in Perth, Scotland nearly three years ago, he was riding the favourite, Solway Dandy, when he suffered a fall three flights from home.

“It was a tired fall,” Toomey told me.

He has no memory of the incident, but he has watched the video “because I like to have an answer for everything.

“It was no-one’s fault,” he says. “Just one of them things.”

Even the best jump jockeys must expect to be deposited on the floor several times during a busy season, sometimes sustaining broken bones and other injuries.

Solway Dandy seems to have taken this particular mishap in its stride, winning two and coming second in five of its last seven races.

Toomey, though, spent the first of what turned out to be 157 consecutive nights in a hospital bed.

“It was a really freak injury,” he says.

His brain was, as he puts it, “spun up so much”, he was given a three per cent chance of survival.

The swelling in Toomey’s brain was such that a large piece of his skull was cut out and he was kept in an induced coma, much like boxer Nick Blackwell following his defeat by Chris Eubank Jr.

The resultant hole has since been covered with a titanium plate about one-third the size of Toomey’s skull.

“I’m metal-headed,” as he told his Birmingham audience, which included several retired jump jockeys, at least two Grand National winners among them.

In spite of the dangers of their trade, jump jockeys are far from the most handsomely-remunerated athletes on the planet.

Nevertheless, Toomey could have walked away from the saddle with about £60,000 ($85,000/€75,000) in his pocket following his accident.

This, though, would have meant accepting he could not ride competitively again.

This, clearly, was something the Irishman was not prepared to contemplate.

“It would have made me happy for about a week until I blew it all,” he said in Birmingham.

While acknowledging that “98 per cent of people would want you to take the money”, he confirms that he still doesn’t regret not having done so.

A former jump jockey called Jeremy Speid-Soote once told me being a jockey was “something that you want to do desperately; it would almost be something that you need to do”.

Toomey’s story provides the most dramatic confirmation I have come across of the truth of those words.

Toomey rode 74 winners before his accident, but has managed none since last July, when, titanium plate and all, he completed one of the most astounding comebacks in any sport by returning to race riding aboard a horse called Kings Grey.

His acceptance this year of an assistant trainer’s post with Dr Richard Newland – “I ride out five or six every morning” – suggests perhaps that he is starting to contemplate the next phase of his career with racehorses.

“I wasn’t getting as many opportunities as I wanted riding-wise,” he acknowledges, while underlining Newland’s impressive strike-rate as a trainer.

He insists, though, that he will continue as a jockey for a while yet and sounds quite determined to land that elusive 75th winner.

I wouldn’t bet against him. Nor would I be the least bit surprised - tough as it is - if he one day carves out a place for himself as a successful trainer.

As I seem to have strayed into the realm of horseracing, allow me to append a few brief observations about another horse dear to my heart who continues to enjoy a remarkably enduring second career – as a metaphor.

The horse is Foinavon, who pulled off probably the biggest Grand National upset of all after his rivals were stopped in their tracks at the same, supposedly relatively innocuous Aintree obstacle.

That, though, was 49 years ago.

All manner of shocks, sporting and otherwise, have been sprung since then.

Yet “Foinavon” remains the benchmark many people reach for to gauge the sheer unexpectedness of - for example - Jeremy Corbyn being elected leader of the British Labour party.

Sunday was another vintage day in the old boy’s rather astonishing reincarnation as a rhetorical device.

Premier League wonder-team Leicester City won again: then English golfer Danny Willett took advantage of long-time leader Jordan Spieth’s dropped shots at Augusta to win the Masters.

Given that these events took place just a day after the running of this year’s Grand National in Liverpool, it was all the more to be expected, I suppose, that both would touch off a flurry of Foinavon comparisons on social media.

I hate to say it, but I am not sure even the Foinavon epithet would do Claudio Ranieri’s men justice if they were to hang on and win the Premier League title.

Of course, both began their respective ‘races’ as massive outsiders; whereas Foinavon benefited from a handicap system which had the notional aim of giving all participants as close as possible to an equal chance of winning, however, no such ethos prevails in a Premier League in which, until this season, money had always talked.

Nor do I think the Foinavon comparison best matches Willett’s accomplishment.

If I wanted to liken this year’s Masters to a Grand National, it would be the 1973 edition when Red Rum secured the first of an unprecedented three victories in the race by getting up to edge out the long-time leader Crisp on the line.