It doesn't get any better than riding a live Gold Cup hope - I can't bloody wait!

And so it begins. Finally. Our first wave of horses left at the crack of dawn on Saturday morning and they’ve been coming over every morning since. The hard work is done and now it’s down to the horse, the jockey and that lady called Luck.

Of our ten winners last year, all are back except Allaho and The Nice Guy. Last year was extraordinary by any standards but it was an outlier and I expect things to start to work back to the balance before that. 

The British have changed the colour of their jumps, which shouldn’t really make that much of a difference, but you can be sure there will be one or two who will jump less fluently than normal. Schooling is great, but there’s nothing quite like racing over them is there?