'He has a big race in him - and it would mean a huge amount if he pulled it off in the Coral Gold Cup'

Ben Pauling had already trained Grade 1 and Cheltenham Festival winners so you could hardly say last season was a breakout one, but his 80 winners and £902,620 prize-money haul were personal bests by a considerable distance.

They came from his stunning new base in Gloucestershire, which has fuelled the improvement in Pauling's view.

"We got going on small budgets with friends and family but had some exceptionally talented horses in my early career," he says. "We then almost grew too big for the yard we were in and the horses suffered health-wise, but I'm confident it's the environment they were living in that was the reason they weren't performing consistently. We were having 40-odd winners a season, not 60 or 70.