‘It’s all I wanted’
After flashing back to his glory of 25 years ago, Paul Nicholls is hoping for a dashing stack of new success.
In 1999, the fresh-faced trainer saluted Flagship Uberalles in the Arkle, Call Equiname in the Champion Chase and See More Business in the Gold Cup.
There’s no doubt about it, those results put Nicholls on the map.
He said: “What an amazing week that was. 25 years ago? Christ! I didn’t realise that.
“When you start training, the only thing you want is a Cheltenham winner. I’d been training for about eight years by then and hadn’t had much of a sniff, then three came at once.
“That kick-started everything for us. We might not have had the Kauto’s and Denman’s several years later if it wasn’t for that week. We’ve had 48 Cheltenham winners and it would be nice to get to 50 in 25 years, wouldn’t it?
“When Flagship won, we went down to the pub and had a bit of a party. I said to everyone: “we best enjoy this” because we had no idea when the next one would come.
“The following day, Call Equiname goes and wins the Champion Chase. We repeated the previous night’s festivities, God we couldn’t believe it.
“Next day ‘See More’ did the business, we were in the pub for a week! Oh it was just amazing, absolutely amazing. It took a while to recover from the hangover but it was worth it.”
