“Oh no, I’m happy,” Cassidy tells Inside Sport. “I made a decision to retire and that I would stand by it.

“It was the right time … exactly one year ago today; about five o’clock this afternoon,” he says a few days after Almandin’s win.

“I just thought it was time. Opportunities were getting less, quality rides were getting less … I’d had a wonderful career, a lot of great opportunities, a lot of ups and downs, but I proved you could get off the canvas and come back at a high level.”

The motivation for Inside Sport catching up with Cassidy was the release of his new book Pumper, which he put together with the help of one of Australia’s most respected sports journalists and a former staff writer for Inside Sport, Andrew Webster.

“Look, I was happy to put pen to paper, just to give people another insight into a jockey’s lifestyle, more specifically mine; the ups and downs, the good times and the bad times,” the 1983 and ’97 Melbourne Cup winner and three-time Australian Derby champion says.

“I enjoyed the book process. It was good because there have been a lot of things said about me and written about me – even when I was cleared of a lot of allegations that were made - and innuendo in racing that is as common as the sky and the moon. The book gives people a chance to get another opinion.”

In the book Cassidy - who retired at the age of 52, and earlier became the third jockey to score 100 Group 1 wins in Australia - illustrates the feeling he held for a good part of his career that there was a target on his back which was being fired at from many corners of the industry.

“Look, there were things like the Diatribe thing from the 2000 Melbourne Cup and Inaflury the following year in the Caulfield Cup, where you have a bloke like owner John Thompson accusing you of not riding to instructions, and doing this and doing that. It was proven in the book, and the stewards inquiry, that there was nothing else I could have done. But they still wanted to chop my head off for it.

“They were sticking it into me, there’s no doubt about it. It was true, it was there; it was printed,” says Cassidy, who rode Kiwi to Melbourne Cup glory in 1983 and Might And Power to the Caulfield Cup-Melbourne Cup double in 1997.

“When I was in a situation where I was accused of something and then cleared of it, well, the headlines? You couldn’t see them. They disappeared. It’s what I say about the media. They do their job to the best of their ability, but some of them have no ability.”

Pumper is published by Pan Macmillan Australia and is on sale now.