Have a prep run or face Cheltenham Festival ban - it's time for drastic measures

In the olden days, published comments from trainers fell broadly into one of three categories: fears, cheers or tears. In other words, they were either fretting about an upcoming race, celebrating victory or mulling over what went wrong.

Lately, there has been an upsurge in a fourth category, which, for the sake of maintaining the rhyme, we might call the 'Oh dears'. That seems a fair heading under which to collect quotes from trainers explaining why their best-known horse cannot, after all, take part in the race which we thought was their target.

Those are always disappointing stories. It's in the nature of jump racing that the big names race only a handful of times each year, so we spend weeks or even months looking forward to the next appearance of a favoured animal or a particular clash between two talents. When those anticipated delights are denied us at a late stage, the sense of having wasted so much time and so many thoughts on something that will not happen . . . well, it can be crushing, even for someone like me who's been round this block a good few times.