Mullins is mighty again but the heart goes out to the festival's unluckiest trainer

Impaire Et Passe was still in Cheltenham's winner's enclosure, with Willie Mullins yet to make his now wonderfully familiar walk to the victory podium, when a stable insider who knows the sport's top trainer better than most explained how the great man does it.

Harold Kirk had been involved alongside Highflyer Bloodstock in purchasing the Ballymore Novices' Hurdle's runaway winner, just as he was central to the acquisition of Energumene and countless other Closutton stars. In seeking to contextualise Impaire Et Passe's talent, he looked back to poster boys of the past who dazzled on the festival stage.

"This horse is as good as Douvan and Vautour at the same point of their careers," said Kirk, who, not for the first time, had witnessed Mullins supply the first, second and third in a Grade 1 prize. For Mullins and Ireland, it was marvellous. For Team GB, whose Hermes Allen wrestled market leadership from Impaire Et Passe only to then finish sixth, it was grim. Kirk seemed like a good person to ask why.