On Boxing Day, Adrian Maguire will more than likely be in front of the telly at his home in Farringdon, Oxfordshire, watching the King George VI Chase at Kempton Park. He would be riding in it, were it not for the barely palatable warning that another fall like the one he sustained at Warwick in March could – make that would – put him in a wheelchair for the rest of his days.

Maguire, aged 31, will never race again, and no meeting will ever underline the poignancy of that more than Kempton this Boxing Day. For it is the King George VI Chase, more than any other race, with which this hugely engaging little Irishman is associated. A painful as well as happy association. In 1993 he won it on Barton Bank, but the following year, on Barton Bank again, he was miles clear coming to the last when the horse stumbled, unseating him. Those who saw it will never forget; those who backed it might never forgive. That's unless they had money on Maguire aboard Florida Pearl in the same race last year.

We meet in the lounge of a country hotel near his home. Weeks have passed since Peter Hamlyn, a distinguished specialist in sports injuries, gave him the news he dreaded, but still, he says, he has not fully come to terms with it.

"From a very young age all I wanted to do was become a jockey," he says. He doesn't know what he will do for a living now, except that it will probably be back in Ireland, in County Cork from where his wife Sabrina hails, and will definitely involve racing. "It's all I know. Sabrina and I have talked about it, but probably not enough. I've a couple of ideas, but I don't suppose anything I turn my hand to will give me the same buzz, unless I jump out of an aeroplane once a week."

I say that I have a feeling Mr Hamlyn might advise against that, too. "Yeah," says Maguire, with a rueful smile. He's heard lots of similar suggestions recently. "I've been to a couple of functions lately and you get these people coming up to you trying to give advice. Do this, don't do that. I've got to stand there and grin and bear it, let them get it off their chests. They mean well, but they're doing my head in."

He hardly needs his head doing in, not with all the injuries he sustained in an 11-year career as a notably fearless jump jockey, said by no less a judge than Richard Dunwoody to have been the finest jockey in the past two decades not to have been champion.

"I broke my right arm four times," he tells me, "one of the bones in my lower leg, I've done vertebrae, shoulders, collarbones numerous times, concussion numerous times, and the last one was me neck."

He still thought he would return to the saddle, though, suffering the discomfort of a metal brace around his head for 10 weeks in order to strengthen his neck. He had to sleep sitting up, and initially, forgetting about the brace, kept crashing into door frames. But it was all worthwhile if it meant he could resume his beloved career.

He couldn't. "Mr Hamlyn X-rayed the neck and scanned it, then sat me down and told me what the risks were. In the bottom half of my neck, there's a plate and four screws. Three discs were removed, and two vertebrae rebuilt.

"The bottom half of my neck is rigid, it's the top half that moves, which puts more pressure on the top half. He said from his point of view there was no way I'd be allowed to race-ride again. I could hear what he was saying but it didn't register. I was numb. I think Sabrina was more upset than I was."

Having driven to London a jockey, he returned to Faringdon an ex-jockey. The journey home, he says, was "quieter than usual. I didn't want to discuss what we'd heard, and I suppose she didn't if I didn't."

He announced his retirement on 28 October. Martin Pipe led the tributes, indeed it was Pipe for whom he rode his first winner on British soil, Omerta, at the 1991 Cheltenham festival.

He was 19, just over from County Meath, and had only been told the night before that he was required at Cheltenham. "Are you sure this lad can ride?" he heard Pipe asking the horse's owner, after the great man had given Maguire a leg up. By the time Maguire won the following year's Gold Cup on the 25-1 shot Cool Ground, Pipe and everyone else knew he could. But the admiration for his skills, and the affection in which he is seemingly held by everyone in racing, will not, to be blunt, feed him and Sabrina and their two young children.

"The game has been good to me," he says. "But I'll need a new car after Christmas because my sponsored car's going back, and it's not that I'm able to stick my hand in my pocket and purchase a 30 grand car. There's an insurance scheme for jockeys out injured, and it's a help, don't get me wrong, it's better than a kick in the arse and I'm grateful for it, but it doesn't match up to what I'd be earning if I was riding."

How, I ask, does he fill his days? "My wife has a horse, I have two ponies, the kids have a pony, so I'm up at seven to get the kids ready for school. Finny – he's four – needs to be picked up at quarter past 12, so in between I do the ponies, and get back in time to pick up the little lad from school. Then I have a bit of lunch and it's nearly time to pick Shannon up. She's six, and she comes out at three. Then it's back home again, back over to the yard...

"There's plenty to do, but I'm not getting paid for doing it."

With Boxing Day fast approaching, I invite him to recall his famous rides in the King George VI Chase.

"Ah," he says, delighted to have the opportunity to look back, with looking forward such an uncertain business. "Now Barton Bank was not the easiest of rides, very straight-backed. He was very brave, used to charge at his fences, but he could hit one very hard and if not fall then get rid of you.

"I remember Barton Bank was me 100th winner of that season. And winning that race gave me the biggest buzz of my career, bigger than winning the Gold Cup, or the Queen Mother on Viking Flagship, anything. It's funny, AP McCoy might laugh now at 100 winners come Boxing Day, but a few years ago it was a great feat to ride that many winners by the end of the year."

That was the season, 1993-94, in which Maguire had an epic tussle for the championship with Dunwoody. Eventually Dunwoody prevailed, riding just three winners more, 197 to 194, but while the contest was on, Maguire did not let a single potential winner escape him.

"If it meant riding in six races and going to another meeting in a helicopter to ride one, that's how intense it got. I remember going from Worcester to Southwell by helicopter one evening, but a headwind slowed us getting to Southwell. The pilot told us I'd make it for me ride, but the horses were leaving the parade ring as we got there, and we watched the race from the air. Afterwards I was called into the steward' room and asked why I didn't turn up for the race I was booked to ride? I said I was watching from the sky. But that was not good enough and I was fined £350 or something."

Twelve months later, again intent on becoming champion jockey, Maguire was back aboard Barton Bank. "And I was 15 lengths clear going down to the last, but I went for a long stride and the horse unseated me. It was a shock to everyone. They were all counting their money, because it looked like I had the race won, although I felt I needed to jump the last really well to still have chance to win, because he was getting tired.

"I've watched the video more times than anyone and I'm still not convinced he would have won. It was a do-or-die effort, and we died. It was the worst day of my career." Worse, even, than the fateful day he fell from Luzcadou at Warwick? He nods. "Yeah, worse than that."

So let us turn instead to one of the best days, at Kempton a year ago, when he rode Florida Pearl so brilliantly. When the day started he thought he was going to Wetherby to ride for Ferdy Murphy, but got as far as Leicester on the M1 when he heard that racing at Wetherby had been cancelled. Murphy asked him to make for Market Rasen instead, but then that too was cancelled, so he turned back for Kempton, knowing Willie Mullins wanted him on board Florida Pearl.

He could have been forgiven, after driving for hours in one vast circle, for riding a stinker that day. But far from it. "Willie was adamant that the horse should be bounced out of the gate and rode handy, and if it felt he was going good enough the last time down the back, then to let him stride to the front, but always to keep enough in my hand to get home, to ride a waiting race from the front.

"All went well until a circuit to run. I had Bacchanal in front of me, Mick Fitzgerald on Nicky Henderson's horse, and I was in third, but when I came round the bend I was in front, he cornered much better than Bacchanal. It was a lot sooner than we'd talked about, but I sat as quiet as I could, and turned into the straight still travelling really well. I could see Bacchanal was under pressure, but I was looking to see where Best Mate was. They were all lined up to have a go."

But Florida Pearl and Maguire held them off, for what, little did anyone know, was to be his last big winner. There were 1,024 winners in total, which makes him the sixth most successful jump jockey of all time. Had he, instead of AP McCoy, become stable jockey for the most successful trainer of all time, I venture, he'd be a good deal nearer the top of that list.

He smiles. "I did ride a few for Mr Pipe after Omerta. He always told me where to be, how I'd be travelling, how the horse would jump, just as if he was reading a book, and that's exactly what the horse done. He had so much knowledge about every horse in his yard. I remember riding a horse for him in Liverpool, and he said, 'You'll travel well to the back straight, and from there on you'll start struggling'. That's just what he's done. He's travelled, travelled, and the next thing bang, gone, no good. His understanding of horses is unbelievable."

Maguire's own understanding of horses is pretty formidable, too. So, the $64,000 question. Might he one day train the winner of the King George VI Chase? A short laugh. "I might. Maybe later on I'll become a trainer. I'd like to ease me way into it from the point-to-point side of things, make a living out of that first. It's dodgy being a trainer. If it doesn't work there's no return at all, you might as well throw your money into a bottomless pit."

I'll offer 1,000-1 against that happening, and very short odds indeed on Adrian Maguire making a big success of the rest of his life, whatever he chooses to do.