KEY POINTS:
It was a dirty, cold, showery afternoon last Sunday as Gary Grylls packed away his saddles in the Te Awamutu jockeys' room.
The typical low-key type of day that the 44-year-old would choose to announce the end of his riding career.
Gary Grylls was pretty much never one
for fanfare. Get the job done with the least amount of fuss.
Yet he rode 1251 winners, more than most in the game.
There were a couple of appropriate points to using Sunday's meeting to make his announcement.
First, it was at Te Awamutu, where he, and his father John before him, had based their entire careers.
The second was that his own son Craig, also riding out of the Waikato centre, is 18 months into a career that looks destined to perhaps eclipse the racetrack exploits of his father and grandfather.
"I'd been thinking about retiring for some time, but I wanted to make sure I stuck around long enough to assist Craig.
"It's a lot better seeing what he's doing from out there than from the grandstand. You see a lot more when it's from close up.
"Dad used to do the same for me."
The late John Grylls was one of racing's true characters.
His son is much quieter, which is why you have to ask Gary Grylls about the wins that thrilled him so much - the joy of those was never really obvious at the time.
"Well, I rode 18 or 19 group one winners, so I suppose they were all thrills.
"Then it was the Auckland Cup. Winning the Railway for Richard [Otto] was a thrill and Allegro was a good horse for me."
One of Grylls' great admirers is Graeme Sanders, to whom Craig Grylls is apprenticed.
Sanders reflected on it recently. "I've got the greatest admiration for a lot of jockeys, and particularly Gary.
"One morning recently at the track a horse reared and went over backwards on him.
"He had to have been hurt, but he got up and said, 'I'm okay'. He kept turning up at the track. I respect him enormously."
It's typical of Grylls that he couldn't come up with even one regret or dis-appointment from something like 28 years of riding.
"I'm not one for disappointments; I guess you have them and move on."
Not even not riding the winner of a Melbourne Cup?
Grylls gave himself a thrill when he hit the lead halfway down the home straight in a Melbourne Cup on The Warrior, but it wasn't to be.
"We won the Saab on the first day and it was a thrill winning on Derby Day at Flemington.
"I gave myself a great show in the Cup when we got to the front, but he couldn't keep going and finished sixth."
Maybe just one little regret there - "Yeah, it's every Southern Hemisphere jockey's dream to win the Melbourne Cup."
Travel is not something that's high on the list of to-dos.
"I've been doing that all my life. I rode in Singapore for nearly two years and I've ridden in the United States and in Hong Kong."
Running dry stock and agisting racehorses on a 28ha property will continue to keep Grylls busy.
"And I live next door to a golf course - I might be able to fit in a mid-weeker there."
