For the great National Hunt trainer of his age, the emotions just tumbled out uncontrollably. This, after all, was supposed to be the race he couldn't win. Nicholls had won Gold Cups and King Georges in profusion; he effectively owned the trainers' title, but the National had been preposterously cruel to him.
Fifty-two times, the master of Ditcheat had saddled horses in the National before Saturday without any luck at all. Only twice had he ever had a horse in the frame. The only thing that could be said for his training record in the big race, he reckoned, was that it was better than when he rode here as a jockey. "Never got around once," he laughed.
A couple of years back, Nicholls had also told me that his extraordinary lack of success in the race didn't really bother him. What a fib! After the fantastic, breathless finish which saw his heroic grey Neptune Collonges just manage to get his snout in front of poor old Sunnyhillboy, his reaction quite belied that throwaway comment.
Career high
Nobody could have looked more thrilled. Part of the reason was that he realised he had just won the trainers' title for yet another year after a magnificent end-of-season battle with Nicky Henderson. Indeed, he had told his rival after Henderson had saddled three winners before the National: "You've won the title — I'm dead and buried now."
But the main reason was that this was the day it must have dawned on him that his career C.V. really could not do without an unforgettable exclamation mark like this. He must have known that, just as A.P. McCoy felt after winning a couple of years ago — his reputation as the finest of his generation had just been beautifully embossed.
There is nothing like winning the biggest race of all. It will go down as another tragically-scarred National, but nobody needed to tell Nicholls about the sheer sadness following the death of Synchronised and According to Pete as he protested almost helplessly: "It's the tragic side of the sport, but I don't know how many millions watch the race. If they didn't like the race, they wouldn't watch."
This is the brutal truth. We watch because it remains one of the most exhilarating spectacles in sport and yesterday's extraordinary finale with Daryl Jacob pumping Neptune Collonges to the narrowest victory in the race's history, plus all the other assorted dramas which surrounded the occasion, demonstrated exactly why it is such compelling viewing.
"I didn't even know where the line was" admitted Jacob, so blind was his drive for glory. Neptune Collonges was, Nicholls had always believed, a class act. Indeed, he said, if it had not been for the exploits of his more lauded stablemates Kauto Star and Denman, the 11 year-old would probably have won the Gold Cup by now.
Brutal race
Yet he was incredibly close to not being run at all by his owner John Hales, who had watched another very successful horse of his, One Man, die on this very course in 1998. Hales admitted that his family had been split over whether they should put Neptune Collonges through this brutal race. His wife, particularly, had serious concerns.
Indeed, Hales, a successful businessman in the toy trade who had hit the jackpot making Teletubbies dolls, was less interested in the incredible finish than the fact that the horse had simply cleared the last fence. "My thought when he went over was ‘Thank God — he's home'. I had to persuade the family that he had earned his right to run in the race."
— The Telegraph Group Ltd, London, 2012
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![[JUGRAJ SINGH]](https://www.unp.me/data/avatars/s/123/123038.jpg?1591210006){kind=avatar}
