Jamie Lynch: Trainers' Championship - It's theirs to lose

The winter’s tale has rarely had such a dramatic denouement. The days were short but the war was long, rumbling since October, on the muddy battlegrounds of Britain. The genius generals, Nicholls and Mullins, sent out their troops, one picking and choosing the showdowns and the other panicking and refusing to lie down. It’s been a working-class war; Nicholls has been working overtime to keep up with the class acts Mullins has at his disposal. For many months, the British battle was fought the British way, of not mentioning the war, the trainers’ title treated like the girl at school they used to fancy, with a public ambivalence masking a private yearning. But as D-Day has loomed there’s been a volte-face, poker face replaced by game face, and the best laid plans have gone to haste with a seismic strategy shift, the equine soldiers no longer fighting for themselves but for the cause.

And the day of the Celebration Chase is truly a day for celebrating the chase for the championship by two masters of their craft, ground-breakers and history-makers, whose Sandown shootout embodies a sporting spirit and a spiriting sport, where the fight to be first will extend to the offered hand of consolation or congratulation between the vanquished and the victor, hence a resolve to a dauntless duel in which there are no losers and only one winner: racing.

It’s easy to romanticise the trainer tug-of-war as a win-win situation, for Nicholls and Mullins, for Britain and Ireland, for National Hunt racing, but the real reason we’re all so plugged in and switched onto this bare-fisted, barrel-chest thumping battle is less that somebody’s going to win and more, far more, that one will lose.

These two have practiced the sort of domination that John Whittingdale can only dream of, winners both, written in the record books and, at times, all over their faces. It’s in their DNA that Nicholls and Mullins want to win this trainers’ title; it’s in their mind that they don’t want to lose it, not now they’re all in, pot committed.

Maybe it’s modern culture, or perhaps it’s just human nature, but losing, or failing as the sporting case may be, is where the action and reaction is really at nowadays. It’s the Falling Down press conference by Louis van Gaal, or the Stokes chokes final over, or Spieth’s Masters meltdown. The drama is in the defeat as much as the success, more so when the heads of the head-to-heads are so headstrong, like our dynamic duo, or one half thereof, as it’s more like Superman vs Batman.

The other reason this particular power struggle is similar to Superman vs Batman is, if you haven’t seen the film, and the reviews say you needn’t, it’s hard to know who to root for, to know which is the hero and the villain. Both have both qualities, depending on which sides of the lines you’re on, and it is sides of the lines rather than sides of the Irish Sea, as nationalism is only part of the partisan politics.

As superheroes, Willie would be Mr Alchemy and Paul the Bull Boy Wonder, the Bullheaded Boy Wonder; and from a villainous perspective Mullins is Megalomania Man and Nicholls Mr Monotonous. But if they made a non-Marvel movie of the season then it would be a slow-burning thriller, with Mullins playing the classy assassin with his super-spec, hi-tech big guns and Nicholls the old-school detective doing all of the running in pursuit and calling on all his guile and every last one of his resources. It’s seen in microcosm with the crashing climax at Sandown, where Un de Sceaux is locked on to the target and PFN is surrounding him in numbers, and he even has an unlikely ally in Sprinter Sacre, who holds the keys to the kingdom: the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

The prospect of winning excites both trainers, but the prospect of losing terrifies them. That’s why this conflict is so compelling. Both trainers have enjoyed remarkable seasons, by different measurements, under different circumstances, but both have said ‘No Deal’ to the offer of plaudits, in favour of chasing the main prize. Deal Or No Deal only works because there are more losers than winners. This will be good. Good grief.

Get a FREE Timeform Race Pass for the Celebration Chase