Pop star Rachel saved me from booze hell

Cambridge Evening News ~ 22/6/05

WHEN jockey Martin Cotton ditched a date with pop stunner Rachel Stevens to go out boozing he knew it was time to seek help for his drink and drug problems. But the date with Rachel, courtesy of a Radio 1 breakfast show competition, was not all the 29-year-old ignored. He had also stopped racing.

So when Martin got back in the saddle at Lingfield Park earlier this month for his first race in four years he was just pleased to be riding again, let alone competitively. He said: "I was just a young lad really. I was going out in London and getting invited to a lot of exclusive parties but because I have got a problem with addiction I did it to excess. Cocaine was the difficult one." "I was barred from pretty much everyw here in Newmarket because I was seen as a bit of a trouble-maker really and was not a very nice person."

Martin had grown up in Mildenhall and taken a jockey's apprenticeship in Newmarket at 15, never doubting he would become a race jockey. Working with trainers such as Sir Mark Prescott, Ben Hanbury, Carl Burke and Henry Cecil, Martin spent 2000 racing in Japan and the US. But when he returned he lost his apprenticeship having not competed enough in the UK. "I was doing well for myself up until then but then it all came to a standstill," he said. "I thought if I can't go racing any more then what else can I do? If I couldn't raceride then everything else was over. I thought I would have to start again." "I left the racing fraternity and did some driving work but I was going out in London and getting involved in the club scene, hanging around with totally different people."

Martin had stopped using cocaine by 2003 but was still drinking too much. The turning point came when Martin pulled out of the date with Rachel Stevens after deciding to go drinking with his friends instead. He sought out treatment but if it were not for the help of family, friends and the Newmarket racing pastor, he may not have made it back. "The chaplain was very good to me," he said. "He would come down to see me and put his arm around me and try to tell me to pull myself together. "He is a very down to earth guy and helps talk to some of the young lads on the circuit. If you need someone to talk to then he is alw ays there."

Martin, of Laburnum Avenue, Mildenhall, has not touched cocaine for 18 months, not had a drink in 10, and is now focusing on building a business empire with friends and family encompassing advertising, sponsorship and fashion deals.