'It's the stuff of dreams' - how a veteran jumps trainer conquered Royal Ascot with the help of some powerful friends

Royal Ascot 2023, Thursday evening. The Ladies' Day card is a couple of hours in the rear-view mirror and a raucous melting pot of jubilant people are singing their way from the course to Richard Hannon’s post-race barbecue. Among the excited party are revellers from three diverse countries and cultures, who like downstream tributaries have met and formed a single powerful river.

From Brazil, there are the Aguiar brothers, Robson and Marcio, expert horsemen, focused and ambitious, who arrived in Ireland more than a decade ago and whose presence in the British and Irish bloodstock business is growing more significant with each passing breeze-up sale.

With them is the loquacious businessman Kia Joorabchian, plucked as a child from the dangerous uncertainties of the Iranian revolution in 1979 to the interim safety of Canada and eventually to a secure life in Kent when he was 12 years old.