Training a Cheltenham winner no mean feat for big or small

In Sunday's Racing Post, Paul Nicholls had a small mutter about how frustrating he found having to wait eight years for his first festival winner until 1999 when, in a classic case of London bus syndrome, three came along at the same meeting – winning the Arkle, Champion Chase and Gold Cup.

Cheltenham does not yield her treasures easily and it was 18 years before Solar Cloud gave David Nicholson his first winner in 1986, with Charter Party also going in at the same meeting two years before his Gold Cup triumph.

A couple of years earlier I had given the Duke a bottle of Taylor's 63 port to be opened on the occasion of his first festival winner, telling him it would drink perfectly well until 2020.