National review

With great victories in Flat racing you witness hats-in-the-air exultation. You see the pride of trainers who nurtured the winner to full potential or of jockeys who timed their challenge perfectly. Sometimes you even spot the quieter satisfaction of the owners and breeders who framed the mating that brought it all about. But much of the joy springs not from the victory itself but from the oodles of cash the winner is now worth at stud. In jump racing that financial bonus is lacking and yet the raw emotion often seems ten times as intense, as we saw after Rule the World won this year’s Grand National.

The winning trainer, Mouse Morris, was literally speechless. The winning owner, the normally irrepressible Michael O’Leary, choked on TV as he tried to tell his sons how much it meant. The winning jockey was damp-eyed and his brother was in tears. True, there was a special factor.