“He’s a brilliant traveller – he’s a lovely, quiet, calm horse – which is a big help when you’re going across the water,” said trainer John ‘Shark’ Hanlon.

“If he was a panicker, he’d have left by now already but when he’s a good traveller, we don’t like to interrupt his routine too much.”

So, instead, Hewick was enjoying a nice session down at the beaches of Waterford on Sunday – while Shark was holding his breath for better weather in England.

“If the ground is right at all, he’ll run – but he won’t run on heavy or soft-to-heavy ground,” he said.

“What we need is a good drying day and hopefully it will go to plan.”

If not, he admits he will be “gutted”.

“A horse like him and of his quality and after getting ahead all year,” he said, shaking his head at the idea that it might come to nothing and all because of a bit of rain. “The owners and all the young lads in the stable are all looking forward to it – it’s a dream.

“It’s something special. There are others, too – all the neighbours at home. Everybody is hoping.

“Maybe we shouldn’t be going for the Gold Cup – but when will we ever have a horse to run in a Gold Cup again?

“That’s the way I’m looking at it,” he said.

“I’d be delighted to finish in the first four, but you always dream about winning it.”

And for now, that Cheltenham dream is almost close enough to touch.

“This time 15 years ago, 20 years ago, I wasn’t even training,” recalls Shark.

“I was going over to Cheltenham but I wasn’t training.

“I used to go over for a bit of craic with the Mullinses. At the time it was mighty.

“But this will be different. Listen, it will be nervous – but it will still be good craic.”

And yet, an eternal optimist, he is already looking beyond a possible disappointment.

“Liverpool is four weeks later and he will go for the Grand National,” the trainer says. “He’s the people’s horse and that’s the people’s race.”

For Ned Hogarty from south Roscommon – part of a four-way syndicate who clubbed together to buy the horse Flooring Porter back in 2018 after seeing a Facebook advert – success at Cheltenham had come before they had even travelled.

“No matter what happens he’s a champion to us so the pressure is off. Whatever happens next is a bonus,” he says.

The Gavin Cromwell-trained horse, sired by four-time Ascot Gold Cup and Irish St Leger winner Yeats, is “in great order” after his journey across the Irish Sea on Sunday, together with Cromwell’s seven other horses.

Hogarty is travelling today and jokes: “We’re waiting for the underpants to dry and then we’ll be off.”

Initially, there will be five in their travelling group and he expects “a good crowd arriving in dribs and drabs”, in the hope of a Stayers’ Hurdle hat trick on Thursday.

“There are young people from the parish going, and I don’t even know them,” he adds.

“Last year, there were young lads there and when I asked them if it was their first time over, they said it was. I said, ‘Don’t expect it to be like this every time’. There’s a great auld vibe around the place – it’s like All-Ireland final day all week long. And the English will always support their own horses but the hand is a lot stronger coming from Ireland. “The rivalry is definitely a big part of it,” he says.

And strangely enough, he thinks that the pandemic might have played a key part in Flooring Porter’s Cheltenham successes over the past two years – and counting.

“The first year he won it, there were a skeletal amount of people there because of Covid, and I think that eased him in because he was so flighty back then that if there had been 70,000 people there, he mightn’t have liked it.

“But he’s well familiar with the course now because they’re as cute as foxes and they remember,” he said.

“This is our Christmas – this is what we look forward to all year,” declared amateur champion jockey Patrick Mullins as he prepared to set out on his own pilgrimage to Prestbury Park.

With between 60 and 70 horses there this year, this will be the biggest ever team heading to Cheltenham from Willie Mullins’s yard in Carlow.

And with military precision and expertly spearheaded by Patrick’s mother Jackie, the exodus began over the weekend, with the departure of the first wave of horses on Saturday, carrying on into today.

With racing in Naas on Sunday, it was “full on”, admitted Patrick, adding: “But we love it. This is our Christmas.

“This is what we look forward to all year.

“As Ruby [Walsh] said once, it’s the one time when it’s like walking out onto Croke Park or the Premier League. It doesn’t get much better than this with 70,000 people watching.”

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