The dangers are all too obvious as we move one day closer to Cheltenham

On an afternoon when the air at Newbury was filled with Cheltenham chat and a late winter chill, Nicky Henderson made a point of seeking out some wood to touch. A few minutes later, it became brutally obvious why anyone with even a modicum of superstition might choose to do the same.

Those four days in March are now just around a most tantalising corner. For jockeys, the threat of a festival-robbing whip suspension has disappeared, yet none of them is certain to get there. To ride at Cheltenham, you must first get to Cheltenham. The sight of green screens in two different places following the fourth race was a reminder that nobody's safe passage is guaranteed.

Sad to report, Head Law did not return home to Jackdaws Castle. JP McManus's six-year-old suffered a terrible injury approaching Newbury's penultimate flight, on the landing side of which Jonjo O'Neill Jr was left prone on the ground. There was quite plainly no hope for the poor animal, whose fate was all too visibly clear, but we also feared for the jockey. To a collective sigh of relief, the screens soon came down and the young man in the green and gold hoops walked away, one ride nearer to Cheltenham, but only just.