What's in a name? Golden memories of Dessie suggest more than one might suppose

One of British and Irish horseracing’s greatest assets is a generally longer and much more colourful heritage than every other sport, much of which revolves around, of course, the upcoming Cheltenham Festival.

Recently I had an immense amount of fun researching Cheltenham ‘greats’ for a commissioned podcast series, and none was more enjoyable than reliving the era of Desert Orchid, who ran at every festival for eight years from 1984, but, famously, was successful just once when defying Yahoo and the weather in a breathless finish to the rain-sodden Gold Cup of 1989.

When I contacted David Elsworth, trainer of the so-called ‘Flying Grey’, to ask him to be part of the project, he replied: “Yes, of course,” before adding: “but hasn’t everybody heard before how clever we all were?”