THE National Hunt hobby-breeder (and I sometimes wonder is there any other sort) enjoys the great luxury of being able to put personal opinions into practice, and provided he\she produces a nice horse, they will be judged by the two great arbiters – the market and the racecourse.

There is often a surprising disconnect between the one and the other, and I suspect that success in the market means that the breeder has successfully anticipated that year’s fashion, whereas racecourse success remains the ultimate goal and the highway to longterm success.