Emotions run high as Ingram family team shows hard work can eventually pay off

Here is a feelgood story, one that centres on two people who, until recently, had been feeling pretty bad. Now they are not, yet their situations remind us how very hard it can be to secure any sort of success in racing, sometimes irrespective of how talented you are or how hard you work.

The FRP Advisory Handicap almost certainly meant little to you, for it meant little to most people. The 0-60 handicap, staged during Brighton's three-day festival on Thursday, was worth only £2,781.67 to the winner, but for Keith Tollick, the owner of Cristal Pallas Cat, this was the first time his own colours had been carried to victory. For the successful trainer and jockey, it was not a first success, but to look at their faces you might have thought it was.

Roger Ingram has been training winners for not far off 30 years. He works from his rented yard in Epsom, a place he loves. In 1997 he sent out 17 winners, while both 2004 and 2005 delivered 13 reasons to celebrate. More recently, the going has got tougher, so much so that when Cristal Pallas Cat scored after fighting hard through Brighton's final furlong, he ended a losing run for the yard that stretched back 547 days, all the way to February 7, 2018.