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If you came across my previous offerings, you may remember that I own a tiny share in a hurdler called Papini, trained at Lambourn by Nicky Henderson. We certainly have the right man for the job in Nicky, who has no less than 31 Cheltenham Festival winners to his name, making him the leading big race trainer amongst his contemporaries.

We also have the right man in the saddle, charming Irishman Mick Fitzgerald, the senior jockey in the weighing room and due to retire later this year despite riding better than ever.

Those two are certainly right at the top of their profession, which is a little further up the pecking order than Papini would claim to be, but after a relatively poor season in 2005/6, he’s suddenly emerged as a serious racehorse this year - two outings, two wins and around £40,000 in the owners’ kitty. The second of them was in the Ladbroke.com Hurdle at Sandown on the first Saturday in January, when he won very easily on heavy, rain-soaked ground.

His next run is due to be in the Totesport Trophy at Newbury on Saturday 10 February, with prize money of £125,000 the most valuable handicap hurdle run anywhere in Europe (watch it on Channel 4). To say that his gang of owners are excited would be a massive understatement, and it’s not the money that is keeping them awake at night.

When you get into racehorse ownership, you know that the odds against having a winner of any sort are daunting, so to have a horse good enough even to compete at this level, let alone with a realistic chance, is beyond our collective wildest dreams. But there is one caveat to that “realistic chance”.

The going, how soft or firm the ground, can make an enormous difference to racehorses, many of whom have a marked preference one way or the other. Before his Sandown win Papini had never raced on anything like such boggy ground, but, to the surprise of all, including the trainer, he took to it like the proverbial duck. So, with just a week to go before the big day, one hundred owners scattered around the south of England can be seen performing strange rain dances at the bottom of the garden. If they work, he could win. Now that really would be a dream come true.