Sir Mark Prescott: 'It was the best moment of my life - I thought I was the messiah National Hunt racing had been waiting for'

In the first of a five-part weekly series, Peter Thomas talks to the veteran trainer about the horses who have shaped his long and illustrious career

Looking at Sir Mark Prescott today, elder statesman of the Newmarket training fraternity, nigh on universally respected, with a Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe winner recently to his credit, it's hard to imagine he was ever anything but the finished article.

On the walls of his Heath House yard hang a series of slate tablets recording the finest hours of the yard where he first took out a licence in 1970. They look very grand, but closer inspection reveals the horses inscribed on them to be something of a mixed bag, tracing back from Arc heroine Alpinista, through a slew of big handicap successes and a smattering of Group 1s, all the way back to those who ran up sequences in lowly grades to advertise the expertise, if not the firepower, of the trainer.