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Tony McCoy is still repelling all challengers from the ranks of jockeys as he appears to have done since God was a child, Paul Nicholls is turning out big-race winners by the handful to keep both hands on his trainers’ title and JP McManus is still at the top of the pile of the owners’ list.

However, look a little deeper and the man who has been as important in British and Irish jump racing as Sheikh Mohammed has on the Flat is finding most of his winners in the foothills while others are conquering the mountains this season.

The Irishman’s horses have won 64 races so far this season, from 348 starts and a prize money total of £515,347. This gives him a lead in excess of £140,000 over his nearest challenger Andy Stewart, whose horses now run under the title of The Stewart Family. However, The Stewart Family’s runners have amassed £373,988 from just 13 winners.

While they were welcoming Poquelin back after his win in the boylesport.com Gold Cup at Cheltenham on Saturday and even scratching their heads after star hurdler Celestial Halo was beaten into second place in the boylesport.com International Hurdle, the famous green and gold colours of McManus were mostly notable by their absence.

In fact their only appearance on Saturday, admittedly a winning one, came in a National Hunt Flat race at Lingfield Park. It was a winner for McManus’s retained jockey, McCoy, for whom each first place holds equal standing but the champion jockey, explaining the reasons for him not riding at the main card of the week in his column in the Daily Telegraph, noted that “unless you are riding for Paul Nicholls or Nicky Henderson, it is tough even for a champion jockey to get on the good horses.”

And that sums up the situation. McManus may not have ploughed quite the millions into his bloodstock interests that Sheikh Mohammed has, but he has hardly been operating on a shoestring either. In 2001 his long-time trainer Jonjo O’Neill travelled south to take over the newly-acquired Jackdaws Castle yard, which they then developed into a state-of-the-art training complex.

Three years later McManus added McCoy to a team whose main purpose lies just a few miles down the road at Cheltenham, with the four days of the Festival in March the point of sharpest focus. However, there has been a frustrating lack of stars coming into view. McManus has had 30 winners at the Festival since Mister Donovan won the Sun Alliance Hurdle in 1982, landing his owner a £250,000 winning bet into the bargain, and the days when triple Champion Hurdle winner Istabraq brought the house down every time that he galloped up that famous hill at Prestbury Park are the stuff of legend.

But McManus has not had a winner of any of the four major prizes at the Festival – Champion Hurdle, World Hurdle, Champion Chase or Cheltenham Gold Cup – since 2003 and has never won the Gold Cup, so perhaps the scouting system for recruiting new talent may be in need of an overhaul to ensure that some of the next generations of Kauto Stars, Master Mindeds or Denmans come into his possession?

But hope is the fuel that keeps owners coming back for more. When JP McManus handed over a jaw-dropping 530,000gns at the Doncaster May sales five years ago to buy Garde Champetre it was with a view to winning that elusive first Gold Cup.

The reality was a solitary novice chase win in 10 starts for O’Neill and some rapidly diminishing returns on that investment. The last roll of the dice came with a switch to Enda Bolger’s yard in Ireland, a trainer who specialises in cross country races. After a fall in his first attempt on Cheltenham’s cross country course, Garde Champetre won the race at the Cheltenham Festival two seasons ago and, when reminded of the cheque with all those zeros, McManus simply replied: “He’s a Cheltenham Festival winner so he’s worth it.”

So the hope is that the likes of Binocular (Champion Hurdle) and Captain Cee Bee (Arkle Trophy) could easily be capable of filling the trophy cabinet in the coming seasons.

Not that the lack of success can be laid solely at O’Neill’s door, because neither of those horses are trained by him. While Sheikh Mohammed regularly trawls other yards to replenish the stocks of his Godolphin yard, McManus tends to buy-to-let; buying the horse but letting the current trainer carry on doing the work that created the interest in the first place.

That is why McCoy will be riding Karabak for Alan King in the BGC Long Walk Hurdle at Ascot on Saturday, a race that McManus won three times with Baracouda, although he is likely to be riding Get Me Out Of Here for McManus and O’Neill in the Ladbroke Handicap.

Surprisingly, the biggest contribution to the McManus coffers for the season came back in July with Nostringsattached, who won the Summer Plate Chase at Market Rasen and a cheque for £37,056.50.

Certainly if there was a way of winning more of the major winter prizes McManus would part with that sum and a lot more – no strings attached.

Paul Wheeler

He had just unseated Sam Thomas at the last fence of the Hennessy Gold Cup, having been bang in contention, and then Nicholls came up with what he admitted at the time was the “mad idea” of sending the horse back hurdling.

 The rest, as they say, is history and Big Buck’s extended his winning sequence to five in the Long Distance Hurdle at Newbury last month. It was not much of a contest because nothing was able to get Big Buck’s out of second gear and, aside from a slight stumble jumping the last flight, Ruby Walsh could have been hauled in front of the stewards for schooling in public were it not for the fact that Big Buck’s beat Lough Derg by seven lengths. 

“How he won that is how he’s been working at home – he just ambles along like that,” Nicholls said. “Physically he’s a different horse to what he was last year. Horses like him and Kauto need a run to sharpen them up. I was a bit nervous if he’d be a bit lazy – you could run him in a seller and he’d only win a length.

“But he’s a bit more mature and he’s done that really nicely. Ability-wise he’s probably as good as anything we’ve got. He doesn’t jump a fence as well as some and while I’ve got Kauto there’s no point. We might try in the future.”

More immediately Big Buck’s is one of 11 confirmed for the Grade One BGC Long Walk Hurdle at Ascot on Saturday. Among his potential rivals is Diamond Harry, a Grade One winner in his novice season, who made an impressive return this season when making light of top weight in a handicap at Haydock Park in November.

That persuaded Diamond Harry’s trainer, Nick Williams, to postpone plans to send the horse novice chasing with a view to a crack at the World Hurdle at the Cheltenham Festival and this race should give Williams a fair indication if those aspirations have any validity.  

Alan King’s yard is still taking time to recover from the muscle enzyme problem that has been the cause of his disrupted season so far but he has two possible runners. Karabak was six lengths second to Zaynar in last month’s  Ascot Hurdle, the form of which has been boosted by Zaynar’s follow-up win at Cheltenham on Saturday, and is stepped up to three miles once more while Katchit, the winner of the 2008 Champion Hurdle, would be running at the distance for the first time.

All distances seem to come the same to Lough Derg, won this in 2007, and would be seeking a fourth course win if his trainer, David Pipe, elects to run.

Paul Wheeler