I’ve also seen the rise of Willie Mullins, who I have known for donkey’s years and when I met him first, he was just an amateur with the idea that he might train a bit and look where he is now!

It was the Queen Mother’s fault; she came into the paddock and everyone started applauding so it went 3 feet up in the air and landed smack on its arse! For many years he was senior presenter on Channel 4 Racing during the jumps season, and he has been named Racing Journalist of the Year three times. Every day in the 10 days up to the meeting, lots of horses start dropping out due to injury and then all those months of planning and years of planning can easily go up in smoke – it is not a window of opportunity, it’s an arrow slit, and everyone is wanting to all fire through that arrow slit all at once. Did you know with a Digital subscription to Yorkshire Post, you can get access to all of our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more.On recovering after an over-indulgent day at Longchamp: ‘I just wish to be left alone with my thoughts and sincere hopes that my liver, which I mailed home by separate refrigerated container, will arrive soon.

On Frankel's last race: 'There were tears speckling the cheers, because there is something almost inexplicably humbling about being in the presence of greatness of this magnitude. Lastly, one other thing that I wanted to say, if you have never been to Cheltenham, then you must go! There is nowhere else like Cheltenham for that level of competition and excitement; you can fancy a horse all year and think it will win a race there and it may run the race of its life and still end up sixth! We are a passionate community of over 55,000 horse racing fans, commentators and industry professionals.I was surfing through channels thinking "you never know" and suddenly I was looking at the holy grail and not believing it. I have spanned golden years and I have lived through the matchless age of Champion Hurdles with Sea Pigeon, Night Nurse, Monks Field doing battle over the years and I’ve seen the Kauto Star and Denman years; and the Best Mate years - I’ve been very lucky.

No missing or damaged pages, no creases or tears, no underlining or highlighting of text, and no writing in the margins. they have to organise all the staff and all the equipment - I mean Eisenhower spent less time planning the D-Day landings than Elliot and Mullins would have done to get those horses over here fit and well…. It’s that competitive - there is nowhere else like it and as for the nerves and anticipation, even if this is my 45th year, I still feel a school kid, bonkers about it as I did as a child! On his favourite racehorse: 'I'll still thump anyone who doesn ' t appreciate that Rondetto was the greatest chaser of all time.

It won at top weight and I remember running into Jim a day later and he grunted at me to say ‘hello’ as he always does; and I said to Jim, “Just to say, I’ve been driving a Ford Fiesta but next week I’ll be driving a Saab Turbo thanks to you!