Younger brother making big strides in pursuit of inspirational Olympic hero

At the end of April, Harry and Dan Skelton might have been forgiven for patting themselves on the back and congratulating each other on a job well done. A hundred winners apiece, a million in prize-money and a Cheltenham Festival winner in the bag were all incontrovertible evidence of a season meticulously planned and clinically executed, with the family name was up in lights.

By the time the summer was over, however, the two ambitious lads found their efforts consigned to the shade as the gaze of a sporting nation focused firmly on the patriarch of the family.

Nick Skelton, father, benefactor and for 38 years a showjumper at the highest level, finally bagged the individual Olympic gold medal he had craved for decades, and no amount of success in the National Hunt field could compete with that.