Lester Piggott has not had a ride in Britain for nine months, his licence has run out and he shows no sign of renewing it. Is this the end for a racing legend?

The telephone call was picked up after two rings, as if a nervous job applicant was at the other end. The answerer this week though was Lester Piggott, perhaps waiting for the offer of a ride on a decent horse.

There were times when Piggott did not have to rely on others, decades when he picked up the phone and informed owners and trainers that he would be on their good horse. Those days, though, have gone and it is unlikely that Lester Piggott will ever sit on an outstanding thoroughbred on a British racecourse again. Indeed, his friends think the man who will be 60 on Bonfire Night may have gone for ever.

The first signal that the 11-times champion jockey was no longer consumed by British racing came at the beginning of the Flat season in March, when he declined to renew his riding licence. Piggott, who last raced in this country in November, said he would review his position at the end of May. Now, though, Piggott is no further on and, in the interim, his wife Susan, who has provided him with the most rides since he returned to the saddle in 1990, has announced that she will retire at the end of the season.

The current numbers at Eve Lodge on Newmarket's Hamilton Road are barely into double figures and are certainly not of either a quality or quantity to interest "The Long Fellow". "We just haven't got many," he said this week.

Piggott now inhabits the desperate twilight that comes to many great sportsmen. Unlike Joe Louis, who ended his days as a pathetic greeter, glad-handing casino visitors at Caesar's Palace, Piggott will not die penniless. But, like the Brown Bomber, he has returned to a trade he once bestrode with his abilities severely impaired.

Over the past three years his mounts have decreased (329, 298, 205), as have his victories (35, 39, 19), and owners have started to use him not on any great grounds of merit, but rather to tell others they once came into the great man's orbit.

In just under two weeks' time it will be the 47th anniversary of his first winner, The Chase at Haydock, and along the way he has developed a reputation as a man par excellence at saving ground on the racecourse and saving money off it. Michael Watt, his business manager for 10 years, once said: "If you could design the perfect sportsman, motivated by success and the money it brings, it would be Lester Piggott."

The finances may play as insignificant a role now as they ever have done, however. What Piggott seems to be missing is the thrill of having the best horse in a race beneath him and the knowledge that those on the other side of the running rail are following him above all others. Piggott gets neither in Britain these days, and has his thoughts trained on arenas where he still has respect.

"Lester wouldn't tell his left hand what his right hand was doing, but I saw him at the July meeting and I got the impression he's just freshening himself up for a winter tour overseas," Geoff Lewis, a long-time weighing- room colleague, said yesterday. "He feels that if he rides here he's just going to get the old scraps and if he had a bad season he might not be quite the draw abroad as if he hadn't had a ride at all. I think he'll get himself fit, maybe come back to the racecourse in the autumn and then go to Australia and Singapore."

Similar messages have been received by another former rival, Jimmy Lindley. "It wouldn't surprise me if he didn't ride here again because I know Lester doesn't want to be going round the back on bad horses," he said. "He's still a very big name out in the Far East, a living legend if you like, and you might find that he waits until the season starts abroad.

"You've got the Indian circuit of Calcutta, Bombay and Madras; Kuala Lumpur, Ipoh and Penang in Malaysia and there's Singapore and Hong Kong. Their main seasons start in September and October and I think there's a good possibility you'll see Lester riding those circuits.

"Lester's brain is still there, he's needle sharp, but the old bones do get weaker and when it comes to a slogging match you can't lay up with an 18-year-old. That's life, that's why people retire.

"He did exceptionally well in Australia and places over the last winter and I think the style of racing abroad, where horses do it a lot more on the bridle, suits the older rider. Lester gets better horses comparatively to ride when he travels and he brings people to the track. He's still a great name to put forward."

Piggott himself has never been the most expansive of figures, but there is little disguising the apathy he feels about riding in Britain again (privately he has suggested he may never be back). "I just don't know, I've left it a bit up in the air really," he said. "It's August now so I suppose at the end of the month I'll have to start thinking about it. I'll have to decide then."

While the date of the great man's return to a British racecourse plays around the minds of many racing folk, it is not a contention that keeps Piggott himself interested for long. "I've done a bit of riding out in Kentucky but I just don't know about here," he said. "You don't want to be doing too much in this weather anyway, do you? Are you phoning from the office?"

If he chooses to return, Piggott could obtain a licence as soon as passing the Jockey Club's medical advisor, Dr Michael Turner. "Providing he can demonstrate he is absolutely fit and he can get the rides, I think the Licensing Committee would grant him another licence," David Pipe, the Club's spokesman, said. "But what the old lad is planning to do I simply don't know. It just seems a bit strange and a bit out of character to fade away."

Piggott has had a symbiotic relationship with the press down the years, and, while there have been intrusions, most notably when his personal assistant, Anna Ludlow, gave birth to their baby son, Jamie, the jockey has wrung his fair share out of the Fourth Estate. When he does officially go, the announcement will doubtless appear in a tabloid made financially poorer by the exercise.

If he is to grace us before then, it will be because he is either bored or in search of a windfall. A largely absent figure from the gallops in the mornings, Piggott may eventually have had enough of days by the poolside and attempt to orchestrate another final hurrah, such as that at Nottingham 10 years ago when a telegram from the Queen Mother said: "You will be sorely missed". He was lost to everyone bar inmates, staff and visitors to Highpoint Prison almost exactly two years later when he was jailed for three years on tax charges.

The winner of 30 Classics, Piggott's days here are numbered and the prospect of a final payout may be the only impetus to complete two milestones in his career: the jockey has ridden 4,495 domestic winners and needs three more mounts to make a career total of 21,000.

As another man on Hamilton Road said this week: "There is no great buzz about his riding in the town any more because, to be honest, I don't think anyone gives a monkey's. It's only the Joe Public outside Newmarket, who still think he's God, who seem to care any more, but I'm sure they'd come to see him ride. And I can't imagine that Lester would retire without going on another farewell tour."