Colin eventually graduated to riding on the Flat but was nowhere near as successful as his two more famous brothers. In 1950, for example, he rode just one winner, Herbert Blagrave’s Little Taffy (left) at Bath on August 2, precisely 200 less than Gordon who finished the season as champion jockey for the umpteenth time.Colin rode regularly for Blagrave for the remainder of his career and rated Blagrave’s dual Royal Hunt Cup winner Master Vote as the best he rode. Sadly, Colin wasn’t on board for either of Master Vote’s back-to-back Royal Ascot triumphs in 1947 and 1948, but he rode him four times in 1946, including when winning at Salisbury in October and finishing fifth in Newmarket’s Free Handicap.

He rode four winners in 1953 but then had to wait eight years for his next, 20-1 shot Song Of The Coral, owned and trained by Blagrave, in the Ruckley Maiden Handicap at Birmingham on August 28, 1961. This was a somewhat fortuitous winner for him as the jockey originally booked for the ride, J Mullane, cried off with a heavy cold.That was to be his last winner. He held a jockey’s licence until 1969 but rode only occasionally. One of his last mounts was on Herbert Blagrave’s Happy Match, who finished unplaced in a back-end three-year-old maiden at Newbury on October 25, 1968, by which time Colin was in his sixtieth year.

Colin Richards died in 1983.

Herbert Henry Gratwicke Blagrave, born 3 March, 1899, first took out a Trainer's Licence in 1928, and sent out horses from The Grange, Beckhampton, Marlborough. He was the godfather of trainer Ian Balding.

In 1948, a starry-eyed 15-year-old called Clive Brittain, having walked the six miles from his home at Calne in Wiltshire, knocked at he trainer's door and asked for work. Blagrave was unable to offer him a job, but gave him half-a-crown home for his bus fare home and told him to try Noel Murless, who trained nearby, on his way back. It was great advice: Murless took Brittain on there and then, and, in his many years with him, Brittain not only learned his craft from a master, but also made plenty of money backing the succession of outstanding horses sent out from Beckhampton and subsequently Newmarket.