Policeman's son who followed Pipe's pioneering path and rewrote the record books

Paul Nicholls wasn't gifted much in his formative years in racing. The grandson of a policeman and the son of a policeman, he inherited the physique of a policeman, and when that handicap – not to mention a horribly broken leg – finally got the better of him, he went into training with no trace of a silver spoon.

He learned his trade as assistant to West Country trainer David Barons – for whom he had also ridden the biggest of his 119 winners – but when the pair parted company after butting heads once too often, 29-year-old Nicholls was left with ambitions to train but no yard, precious little money and the vague notion of becoming a Devon pub landlord for the rest of his life.

Had he succumbed to the fleeting notion of entering the licensed trade, the racing world would have been denied some of its finest moments of the past three decades. As it was, fate intervened to hand him a rare moment of privilege; the chance to become the tenant of stalwart racehorse owner and dairy farmer Paul Barber at Manor Farm Stables in the Somerset village of Ditcheat. The two hit it off and on November 1, 1991, Nicholls began a career that would take him to heights that few had even come close to scaling in the history of jump racing.