FOR this correspondent, the highlight of the jumping year has to be the remarkable story of Coneygree, who became the first novice since Captain Christy to win the Cheltenham Gold Cup, and gave a heart-warming win to the team of Mark and Sara Bradstock, who aren’t exactly the most fashionable, to say the least.

It’s easy to pigeon-hole Sara Bradstock, daughter of the late Lord Oaksey and who rode as an amateur as plain old Sara Lawrence, as being the beneficiary of an aristocratic background, with all its silver-spoon connotations, but that would be wide of the mark by some way, and few are less affected than Sara and husband Mark, who have been scratching a living in the world of National Hunt Racing with a staff made up entirely of family, with daughter Lily leading up at Cheltenham and son Alfie doing much of the schooling when his career as a talented event rider allows.