Youth and exuberance to the fore as Clarence House duo capture the imagination

It was a day for making your mind up, even if the market couldn’t. It was a day to put on your blue and orange scarf or nail your colours to the green and gold mast, to signify partisanship with one 11-10 favourite or the other. Most of all, the one thing upon which we could all agree, was that it was a day that would be ‘what jump racing is all about’. And how right we were.

Half an hour before two chasing heavyweights went at each other like snake and mongoose in the day’s main event – the big rematch, the decider, the hour that had finally cometh – Sean Curran stood in the winner’s enclosure and offered a masterclass in what it takes to survive in the lower reaches of the sport, a lifetime away from the glory of this regal setting.

“I’ll have a day off tomorrow, then I’ll be shovelling s**t again on Monday,” he told us bluntly, while his friends on the podium shouted reminders that he was due up to receive the winning trainer’s prize, the just reward for all the tribulation and heartache the game had thrown at him.