Healthy horses mean happy trainers – but the road to Cheltenham can be brutal

That well-known adage 'form is temporary, class is permanent' should have 'but health is paramount' tacked on to the end of it. Trainers get used to taking the rough with the jagged in racing.

They can absorb the routine slings and arrows – getting chinned in a photo, being hampered, fallers etc – but the thing that drives them round the bend with a mix of impotence and frustration is when the horses are just not right.

Among the classic signs over jumps is when you notice a yard's horses seemingly travelling fine through their races, only for them to deflate like pricked balloons two from home.