'The National wasn't long after my son died - and the night before I just had the weirdest feeling I had to get my other son over for it'

When Irish racehorse trainers tell their origin stories they often begin with nostalgic recollections of the back-breaking labours of a father or grandfather to carve out a gallop at the top of a family farm in order to tighten up a cheaply bought gelding for a bumper at somewhere like Ballinrobe or Bellewstown.

Michael Francis Morris also hails from a family with a heritage of hard and meaningful work but in his case the family shoulders were pressed to an entirely different kind of wheel.

His mother, Sheila Dunlop, helped save the world from the darkness of Nazi oppression, while his father, also named Michael but better known as Lord Killanin, rescued the Moscow Olympics from total disaster in the wake of a global boycott over the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1980.