Brough Scott relives the magical moments from four outstanding days

By 7.45 on Tuesday morning an independent-looking grey gelding with four RRs (refused to race) to his name had been among the 30-strong Gordon Elliott team already filing back to the Cheltenham stables after exercising on the track. The usually all-conquering Mullins squad would not show for another quarter hour. Eight hours later the bolshy brute had swept through and won the opener under teenage prodigy Jack Kennedy as the first in Ireland’s 19-victory sweep. Labaik's success kick-started the week of the morning prophecy.

Even with two other Elliott winners on the opening day the implications of what we were being told on those early pilgrimages were shrouded by the star British turns of David Pipe and Nicky Henderson. Un Temps Pour Tout’s short-head repeat victory in the Ultima under an inspired Tom Scudamore was happy proof that his and David’s generation is no soft imitation of their mouldbreaking fathers Martin and Peter, but Henderson’s heroics were something else. Can it really be 32 years since Henderson avoided See You Then’s flashing teeth to saddle the first of that horse’s three and his own six Champion Hurdle triumphs?

The ever-improving excellence of the Seven Barrows operation is abiding proof that however meticulous a stable’s daily activity, nothing is as important as the decisions from the top. No trainer can make a horse go faster but a bad one can sure as hell mess it up. Simple efficiency can only get you so far, what sets the elite apart is judgement – and the years have only sharpened Henderson’s antennae, never blunted them. Horses like Altior and Buveur D’Air may be aces but it’s easy to get them trumped and it says something for the trainer’s status that Altior’s success in the Arkle was discussed more in terms of what might have been if Charbel hadn’t fallen than about the winner’s perfect jumping and six long lengths of victory on the day.