Don't confuse Cracker with Crackle – or Garfield

1 Thistlecrack's owners Heather and John Snook were outbid on him as a foal, when he was sold for €32,000 to pinhooker John McDonald – a former gaelic footballer for Kildare. The Snooks had family reasons for wanting to buy the horse: before him, they also owned Quick Approach, an elder brother to Thistlecrack who showed distinct promise before breaking a leg on the gallops. They finally secured Thistlecrack for €43,000 at the Tattersalls August National Hunt Sale in 2009, after which he was put in training with Tizzard at his Venn Farm base on the Dorset-Somerset border at Milborne Port.

2 The Snooks are farmers with about 800 head of cattle just outside the village of East Coker, near Yeovil, not far from their fellow dairy farmer Tizzard, a longtime friend and ally of the owners on the West Country circuit. East Coker provided the title to the second poem of TS Eliot's Four Quartets.

3 Thistlecrack was beaten into third on his racecourse debut aged five in a Wincanton bumper on April 14, 2013. The two horses who beat him, Foggy's Wall and Money For Nothing, have won just one race from 28 subsequent starts between them. Almost a year to the day after his debut, Thistlecrack won his first race over the same course and distance on April 13, 2014. Sent off 14-1, he looked to be the Tizzard stable's second string behind 5-1 chance The Cider Maker, who was seventh.