'This level of the sport is a scary place at the moment but it's all I've ever known - except working in a chip van, and I blew that up!'

Signs of ostentatious wealth are thin on the ground at Windsor House Stables. This is a Group 1-winning yard that is looking forward excitedly to Saturday's Lockinge Stakes, hoping to add the Newbury feature to two previous Group 1 successes, but the most copious commodities to be found here are early starts and hard graft. If the trainer has a Bentley, it must be parked elsewhere.

This is no bargain-basement operation, as results have consistently shown, but it is one that relies on the type of commitment born of a lifetime in the sport – rooted somewhere between passion and necessity. Clearing the frost off the Jeep at daft o'clock this morning was just the first of a litany of small but significant jobs that nobody else is going to do.

"Smaller trainers are finding it very tough and this level of the game is a scary place to be at the moment," shrugs Roger Teal, "but it's a way of life, it's all I've ever known, and then you're in too deep to get out of it.