Towering over his fellow jockeys at 6ft 4in, is Jack Andrews the longest shot in racing?

"It's probably got better as I've got older, I've learned to adapt my diet to suit me and do what works for me. It's definitely easier than it was a few years ago."

- Esther Addley

At 6ft 4in (1.93 metres), Jack Andrews is used to towering over his fellow jockeys, who tend to be at least a foot shorter than him.

But as he competes for his first Cheltenham festival win this week, the man who has been described as the tallest jockey in the world is determined not to let his unconventional stature slow him down.

There is no height limit for jockeys, but because they carefully watch their weight to help their racing, most are considerably shorter than Andrews. Keeping the scales at 10 stone 4lb (65.3kg), as he weighed in yesterday, was "a daily struggle", the 24-year-old said before his first race of the festival.

Andrews was raised in a racing family in Dunchurch, near Rubgy in Warwickshire - two sisters, Gina and Bridget, are jockeys and both his parents rode as amateurs. He always loved the sport, he said, and started racing at about 15 or 16, when he was about 5ft 10in.

As he grew, however, "my weight ballooned a little bit when I was 18, 19 and I then had to really grab hold of myself and sort my diet out".