Paul Nicholls v Willie Mullins: reliving the epic clash of the training titans in the 2016 title showdown

It’s all about the money. What can you buy for £53,593? A very flash car? 100 hedge-trimmers (the voice of experience)? A runty yearling no-one else wants at Tattersalls Book 1? All these, probably. That amount of cash, if you’re Paul Nicholls, will also buy you breathing space.

With seven races to go in the 2015-16 jumps season, £53,593 is the slender advantage he holds over Willie Mullins at the top of the table. What started off in humble fashion back in the mists of time (April 26, 2015) has steadily developed into a knock-down-drag-out fight to the finish, the closest climax to the trainers’ championship for more than a decade, a spellbinding final afternoon at Sandown. Follow the money, said Deep Throat. Belatedly, we take his advice.

It’s not a racecard you need to keep up with events today, it’s a calculator. Everyone’s a mathematician, everyone seems to have grasped the minutiae of the welter of place prize-money that will likely be crucial in determining the destination of the trophy, whether Ditcheat or Closutton.

The PR supremo Johnno Spence goes old-school, working out the figures by hand, big numbers on a small piece of paper. It’ll be a day of marginal gains and losses.

Everyone’s wearing a scarf, too. You’d call this one Ballycasey pink and green were it not for the very definite averral that Annie is the power behind the neckwear. “I’d marry her if I could,” says Nicky Cook, a remark that husband Tim has evidently learned to live with, content in the knowledge only a Champion Hurdle winner could replace him. Yet without Annie, Cook sides with Nicholls in this particular duel in the sun.

“It’ll be the place-money, I think. Paul Nicholls will pick up enough to stay in front,” she says. Two scarves along is Neil from Tunbridge Wells, clad in the light blue and orange that indicates his Un De Sceaux leanings. “It’ll be close,” he says. “Un De Sceaux might make all the difference.”

Paul Nicholls celebrates winning the 2016 trainers' championship after Just A Par finshed second in the bet365 Gold CupCredit: Edward Whitaker

There’s a handicap chase at Newton Abbot in August that might have made all the difference, such is Nicholls’ shrinking margin of superiority. Throughout the vast and almost entirely thronged concourse television screens keep us updated about the figures, as though they were fast-breaking election results, echoes of Bush and Gore and the hanging chads keeping them hanging on, hanging on.

Here’s Mullins, dark hat, dark coat. He doesn’t seem to be  scanning the floor for dropped tenners, whistling ‘Brother, can you spare a dime?’ softly to himself, panhandling, but money must be on his mind.

He picks up a little with Voix Du Reve in the first, a little more with Valseur Lido in the next, more again with Un De Sceaux, who isn’t happy to be pressurised on the lead.

As Sprinter Sacre pulls gloriously away from his pursuers in the Celebration Chase a roar lifts from the grandstands that has absolutely nothing to do with money, has absolutely nothing to do with Richard Johnson, or Nicholls, or Mullins.

Everything end-of-season is put aside for a horse who would grace any season, barrelling joyfully home 15 lengths clear.

And yet, and yet . . . the eye is drawn back through the field – where’s Un De Sceaux, where’s Dodging Bullets? Where did Solar Impulse finish? Also-rans have never been so interesting.

Out come the calculators again. Somewhere quiet, Spence is doing sums in the rapidly diminishing margins of his scrap of paper. Nicholls still has the lead, about £30,000 to the good, but without any prearranged signal an air of conclusion seems to descend upon those gathered around the parade ring that the bet365 Gold Cup will decide matters. This is it, then.

Just A Par (right) and Southfield Theatre (left) finish second and fourth to The Young Master (orange cap) in the 2016 bet365 Gold Cup to hand Paul Nicholls the trainers' championshipCredit: Charlie Crowhurst

From the outset of the last grand hurrah of a grand campaign, Sam Twiston-Davies on Southfield Theatre and Harry Cobden on Just A Par stick close to Bryan Cooper on Measureofmydreams, as though to lose him were to lose all. Coming to the Pond for the final time Twiston-Davies saves ground on the rail, Cobden goes the other way, a pincer movement on the title, and as Cooper shows a sudden discomfort the endgame plays out.

Just A Par stays on stoutly as he did 12 months ago, almost does enough to beat The Young Master but – critically – does just enough for his trainer. Southfield Theatre pushes fourth-place money into the middle of the table and Nicholls takes it all.

In the winner’s enclosure there are half a dozen women who have given up on their calculators, forsworn their mental arithmetic.

“Have they called it?” they ask of anyone, everyone. Are they Just A Par connections? “No, we’re just for Nicholls” they say, breathlessly. Then Nick Luck strides past us, a microphone in his hand, a stern look on his face, the same question on his lips. “Have they called it?”

Slowly, surely, as fingers tap hurriedly on calculators, as prize-money already garnered is weighed against prize-money still to win, the whisper becomes a murmur, a shout. Whoever they are, they’ve called it. It’s Nicholls.

Southfield Theatre gets the best ovation ever accorded any fourth-place finisher. Just A Par is greeted like any conquering hero. And in their wake walks Nicholls, his arms wide for the embrace, the job done, the battle won, the championship heading back to the little lanes of Ditcheat for a tenth time.

Normally, at these heightened hours, it falls to the hacks to demand a few words, illumination, elucidation, explanation, as they take close order around Nicholls. Today there is no need – the look on his winner’s face says all we need to know, tells us that it’s not about the money at all.

And then the magnificent Mullins walks by, lifts his hat, offers his hand. “Well done,” he says, with a smile. “Great season.”

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