ANYONE still needing proof of the competitive streak that drives Paul Nicholls onwards in his quest to be the best in the business clearly hasn’t attended the annual pre-Cheltenham Festival quiz night at the Manor House Inn pub a short stone’s throw from his Ditcheat stable.

For though the years where Nicholls draws a Festival blank are few and far between, the ones where his team fails to carry off first prize in the quiz are even rarer.

While his knowledge of the famous races of the Festival dates back to days assembling racing scrapbooks as a boy and watching the action unfold on television with his granddad, Frank, Nicholls’ Festival expertise has since developed away from the theory and into the practical as the trainer of no less than 45 winners at the meeting.

It took time, of course. As assistant to David and Jenny Barons, he effectively masterminded the success of Topsham Bay in the 1990 National Hunt Chase, but under his own steam Cheltenham Festival success took longer to come.

Having taken out his own licence the following year, it wasn’t until 1999 that Flagship Uberalles broke Nicholls’ Festival duck when taking the Arkle under Joe Tizzard.

“I looked at him beforehand in the paddock and thought ‘I really can’t see this horse not at least being the first three’,” Nicholls recalls. “He looked fantastic. I’m not always right, but this time I was. I backed him too.”

Gold Cup

It was a seminal success, but the joy that came with it was soon overtaken. In the two days following, Nicholls sent out a pair of winners when Call Equiname took the Queen Mother Champion Chase and See More Business, revitalised for the fitting of blinkers, won the Gold Cup under Mick Fitzgerald.

“To enter the winner’s enclosure three times in three days was the stuff of dreams. We all went to the pub that night to celebrate and the next day paraded the three horses through the village,” Nicholls says. “We’d worked hard to get there, but it suddenly felt like we had made it.

“I was desperate for that first winner. At the time it seemed more like 30 years than eight, but I was impatient.

“I can’t tell you how important it was though. It was a defining point. It gave me confidence and it gave others confidence in me. If we hadn’t broken through that year, then I seriously doubt we’d ever have got to where we are now.”

Big-race winners have arrived with regularity ever since for Nicholls, but of all his achievements, his direction and preparation of two of the horses that dominated a golden era of jumps racing will still be talked about when other memories are long forgotten.

At the time, it seemed like Kauto Star and Denman’s dominance of the steeplechasing scene would last forever. Their remarkable longevity helped form that impression: It’s easy to forget that having regained the Gold Cup crown from his stablemate in 2009, the first horse in the race’s history to do so, Kauto Star ran again in the race on three further occasions. Few horses are robust enough to run at seven successive Festivals. Even fewer of those have brilliance to accompany their durability.

Denman’s Gold Cup record might, of course, have proved just as longstanding, had a heart problem not intervened after he finished second to Long Run in the 2011 renewal. He too managed six successive visits to the meeting.

Nicholls correctly regards his saddling of the first three in the 2008 Gold Cup, when Denman beat Kauto Star and Neptune Collonges, as being at the top of his achievements, even if it is now a day for which memories are recalled with mixed emotions.

“It was something awesome, obviously. Kauto Star came back and won another Gold Cup, Neptune Collonges a Grand National. They were great, great horses.

“But in the immediate aftermath it was hard to know what to think. I was sad for Kauto Star, but at the same time clearly delighted for Denman and for his owners and for Sam Thomas.

“John Hales was absolutely buzzing with Neptune Collonges finishing third – and he very nearly caught Kauto for second. He was saying ‘We nearly beat Kauto!’.

“The reception that day was amazing. I don’t think I had heard one like it before.

“I watched the replay afterwards on the TV there maybe 10 times or more, but even when I got home I wanted to watch it again. It still gets to me even when I see it now.

“It’s very hard to compare generations and it’s never something I like doing, but I don’t think there are many horses around who are on that level now. If any.”

Secret of success

Nicholls has always been coy over the secret of his success – “it’s a question you get asked a lot for which there isn’t a simple answer” – but good horses and a good team looking after them is an obvious starting point.

His two closest lieutenants are Clifford Baker, right-hand man for 23 years and counting, and Harry Derham, Nicholls’ nephew and assistant trainer since quitting riding.

Nicholls calls the shots, but the decisions are always taken under counsel. One thing all three are fully agreed upon is the idea of the ‘January break’, the opportunity to extend the first of the twice-yearly ‘flu inoculations into a short period of recuperation for his horses.

“It was Jenny Barons who first gave me the idea,” Nicholls says. “She was firmly of the opinion that you couldn’t keep a horse going in constant work from the early autumn all the way into the late spring without at least giving them some time to freshen up.

“Clifford was in support and we’ve been doing it from the start, although after the equine ‘flu outbreak, when we were able to keep racing when others weren’t, I suspect most of the rest might be doing the same now.”

Derham explains how it works in application.

“You don’t completely stop with them, but they will all generally have two quieter weeks, so that from the end of January until the end of April they have enough petrol left in the tank,” he says.

“In any case, it’s not always a good idea to be running at that time of the year. Obviously this winter we had to race on soft ground quite a lot, but if you can you tend to avoid heavy – you can do just as much damage to a horse as you can on very quick ground.

Bounce back

“If you get a real honest horse who is trying their hardest on very heavy ground, that can take a lot out of them and although you might think that they have bounced back, sometimes it’s only when you run them again that they show just how long it has taken them to get over it.”

While Derham might only have been working as assistant since giving up riding at just 19, his own association with the Cheltenham Festival, like that of his boss, goes back to days when he should have been in a classroom. He first attended in 2007, but his personal highlight was Kauto Star’s second win two years later.

“I was still at school, but the memory of that day will be with me forever,” he says. “The Gold Cup is, for me, the absolute ultimate race and that was as good as it gets. I might not be very old, but I think it will be a very long time before I see another horse as good as him.

“It’s only when you look back now, and we’ve had Gold Cup runners since and are lucky enough to hopefully have a big contender for this year’s race, that you realise how hard it is and just how special Kauto Star and Denman were.”

Derham describes operations at Ditcheat for Cheltenham week as being like a well-oiled machine, the clear intention being to normalise the experience as far as possible for every horse.

“They sleep in their own beds, have their breakfast as normal, and then at about 7am they’ll head off,” he says.

“When you’re working there, it’s very important for everyone to stay focussed on what they are doing. Take Harry Cobden, our stable jockey, for example. He’s got a job to do and we need to keep him dedicated to doing that.

“It’s the same for the horses too. They are can be intelligent creatures – some of them anyway – and they can definitely pick up vibes if you’re not being calm. It’s a different occasion, obviously, with a massive atmosphere, but we just need to do our jobs so that they realise the same is expected of them too. That’s really important.

“For the staff at home, it’s business as usual. While we will have plenty of runners at the Festival, we will also have over 100 who won’t be running and who will need to be looked after.

Good week

“For all that you will be hoping that you’re going to have a good week, for some horses it’s not even on their radar, so you have to be thinking about all of them as well as those who are lucky enough to be going to Cheltenham.”

As for his own Festival success, when Salubrious took the 2013 Martin Pipe Hurdle, Derham is predictably humble about his riding talents.

“It had been an absolutely miserable week,” he says. “Clifford had tragically lost his son in an accident and all of us were not in a very good way at all.

“Silviniaco Conti had fallen in the Gold Cup earlier that day and by the time Paul brought the saddle to me, he said ‘I nearly pulled him out as the ground has gone right against him., so just get him relaxed and look after him.’

“In the end he won with a bit in hand so all I really had to do was steer him round and not fall off, but I think the fact that we weren’t expecting anything probably actually helped.

“I had a couple of seconds as well, but the Festival is tough. I rode in the Grand Annual once and had my eyes closed most of the way. It’s a mad race. A horse bolted going down to the start and some of the other horses were getting worked up. I remember Choc Thornton being on the inside, saying ‘I’d love a cigarette, just to calm the nerves now!’. I was thinking ‘What have I let myself in for?’.”

For most of those lucky enough to be in the packed stands, or even those perched more comfortably on the sofa in front of a television screen, the Cheltenham Festival is an exhilarating affair. But for those taking part, it is all of that and more.

Victories and defeats have the ability to make or break careers, reputations are built and ended in a matter of mere minutes.

Does Nicholls enjoy the week? “When it’s over,” comes the immediate reply. “It is four days of tremendous pressure and anyone in this game who doesn’t admit as much must be lying.

“There is no peace when you’re there. I find it harder and harder to find somewhere to hide and everywhere you go, there’s someone who wants to know what’s going to win and what you fancy.

“It’s not the be-all and end-all, of course, and I do think it’s a shame that if you don’t have a winner there you can be judged to have had a disappointing season.

“More than ever this season, we’ve got a lot of young novices coming through who will have their futures over fences and I won’t be running many of them.

“But it is the closest we have got to an Olympics in our sport and the pinnacle of our year. For one week, you just have to accept that you’re going to be living with extra stress and no sleep.”