How Tiger Roll went from Godolphin reject to Grand National hero

For all the tributes paid by the form book, for all the reverent words that will appear in due course in the annals of the turf, it's perhaps Gordon Elliott who best sums up the appeal of Tiger Roll. "He's given great days to so many people," says the man who has led him to all his finest hours, and he couldn't be more right, although perhaps even the trainer doesn't realise the vast reach of the joy that has been dispensed.

To Lisa O'Neill and Keith Donoghue, 'Tiger' gifted first winners at the Cheltenham Festival; to Michael O'Leary he has handed four glory days in the famous maroon and white; for Elliott it was a second Grand National that similarly delighted everybody at Cullentra House Stables and quite possibly across the whole of County Meath; Davy Russell's reward was worldwide public redemption in the saddle from which he was once unceremoniously ejected. But that's not all.

Sheikh Mohammed, so they say, when informed by telephone in the immediate aftermath that a horse of his had won the most famous race in the world, was at first bemused and then "tickled pink" to be reminded of the underwhelming little colt who had passed through Godolphin's doors – both in and out – at the beginning of the decade. He laughed uproariously, apparently, to learn of the well-bred foal who had failed to make the grade at the most prestigious academy in the country, only to follow a circuitous path to fame on a different planet entirely.