‘My sister’s last wish was for us to go racing that day’ - the extraordinary story of a most unlikely Champion Hurdle heroine

Richard Price and his wife Jane are very proudly English, no matter how many people think their home county of Herefordshire is in Wales. The couple do, however, share some form of kinship with one proud racing Welshman, Sirrell Griffiths, who inked his name on the Ordnance Survey by winning the 1990 Gold Cup with the 100-1 shot Norton's Coin.

It's not so much the bare facts of the victory that resonate, but that Griffiths annexed the great prize having spent the best part of the morning milking his cows – of which he had far more than racehorses.

At Eaton Hall Farm, the old family home on the River Lugg, near Leominster, Richard Price pulled off a similarly impressive feat of 'mixed agriculture' 30 years ago, when he woke early to do his bit in the lambing shed before heading off to the greatest arena in jump racing to beat the ‘proper trainers’ and win the 1994 Champion Hurdle with his mare Flakey Dove.