Gifford is all set for Cheltenham

FIRST the bad news. Trainer Nick Gifford has confessed to being a physical wreck.

His knees creak and are short on ligaments after three operations, the legacy of being sent flying through the air, crashing on to the tarmac and being lucky to be alive after being mown down by a car when 14. His patched-up body still allows the odd game of golf, but now seriously restricts playing his beloved cricket.

The good news is that Gifford, 46, is going into next month’s Cheltenham Festival armed with an exciting, slick, silky galloping equine athlete in Didtheyleaveuoutto in the Champion Bumper.

The gelding, whose dam Pretty Puttens is a half-sister to 2008 Gold Cup winner Denman, could also expunge a painful memory.

Gifford (right) learned how hard it is to train a Festival winner by watching the efforts of his late father, Josh, the four-time champion jockey who trained almost 1,600 winners, but had to wait an age for the first of his 10 Festival winners to arrive. For Nick, the opportunity seemed in his grasp in his second season after taking over running the family stable at Findon in Sussex. But the AP McCoy-ridden Straw Bear was beaten a neck by Noland in the 2006 Supreme Novices’ Hurdle. ‘I stood there in second place among all the euphoria and I actually felt down,’ Gifford said. ‘I think it took my old man 17 years to train a Festival winner. ‘There was me getting chinned on the line in my second season thinking I may not be back here for a long time.’ So it has proved. Plenty of very good trainers have never had a winner at Cheltenham, but everyone wants to do it.’ ‘I am not being naïve. If he had been a superstar he would probably have not come to me. ‘He has a fantastic pedigree and is all about speed.’