Nicky Henderson: ‘It’s a nightmare to maintain - it has to be chock-a-block to make it pay, it wouldn’t work half full’

A rather soggy Cheltenham Festival was somewhat appropriate following one of the wettest winters in living memory.

Indeed, visiting Seven Barrows in the build-up to the meeting – shortly before that fateful day of Constitution Hill's gallop at Kempton and all the horrors that followed for Nicky Henderson – the road from Lambourn is flooded and there is now a small lake alongside the driveway, where previously there was just grass. The driveway is under water as well, and although the gulls are bobbing away merrily, the trainer is having to fend off irreverent text messages from his jockeys suggesting a spot of cold-water swimming would do him the world of good.

The previous week's rain was torrential, apparently, but the standing water is more about the overflowing of the natural springs at the foot of the downs, although Henderson can't bring himself to grumble too much. The springs may be a nuisance at times like this, but they do supply the yard with a valuable water supply, via a borehole dug around 20 years ago, and, more importantly, they are why this yard exists in the first place.