British trainers brought a knife to a gun fight at Cheltenham - but it was Willie Mullins who underachieved

Paul Nicholls' cornflakes must be strewn all over his kitchen. Since the Cheltenham Festival and even before it, there has been more than the odd article about how British trainers have got complacent and have allowed Willie Mullins to take over, but if ever there was a man who would never rest on his laurels, it's Nicholls. The truth of the matter is that jump racing has become a race to the top financially and he and most of the other British trainers simply cannot compete with Mullins.  

That is no different from any other sport where those with the most money take over – Manchester City are the most obvious example – and the thought of Nicholls, Dan Skelton, Ben Pauling or Nicky Henderson being complacent is just plain wrong. Let's not forget that Henderson would have trained the favourites for the Champion Hurdle and the Triumph, and the second favourites for the Champion Chase and Gold Cup if his string hadn't gone down with the lurgy.

One of my favourite films is The Untouchables which is about the downfall of Al Capone and one of the famous Sean Connery delivered lines in it is that you can't bring a knife to a gunfight, but that is exactly what British trainers did at this Cheltenham and many before. Personally, I think the British trainers overachieved this year and Mullins underachieved. Given their respective firepower, Mullins should really have had more winners than Britain put together, but he didn't.