Douvan tumbles out but not before showing all his old swagger

His pink silks were grass-stained and mud-covered but Patrick Mullins was a believer again after his last-minute call up on Douvan in the Betway Queen Mother Champion Chase.

Ultimately the pair got no further than the open ditch four out, where Douvan took a spectacular tumble, but until that point it looked like the Douvan of old. More importantly, it felt like the Douvan of old.

“He felt like he was back,” said Mullins jnr, parachuted in after Ruby Walsh’s injury in the RSA Chase. “He just stepped at the ditch but he was cantering before that and the horse is 100 per cent.”