• Willie Mullins has one week left to overturn deficit of £25000
• Nicholls hails brilliant ride at Ayr from winning jockey Sam Twiston-DaviesThe count had reached nine-and-a-half in the National Hunt trainers’ championship as the field lined up for the Coral Scottish Grand National at Ayr on Saturday,with Willie Mullins ready to celebrate the first success for an overseas trainer since the 1950s. Eight minutes later, Mullins and Paul Nicholls were back on their stools and preparing for a final round at Sandown Park next Saturday after Vicente’s victory in the feature race wiped out Mullins’s six-figure lead and establish Nicholls back in front by 25000.
The trainers’ title has gone down to the final card of the season in the past, and but never after a race for the championship that has veered so wildly from one side to the other. Mullins was an 8-1 chance at Christmas,when Paul Nicholls, the champion in nine of the past 10 seasons, and seemed unassailable,but long-odds by the end of the Cheltenham Festival in March and 1-10 after final week’s Grand National at Aintree, where neither Mullins nor Nicholls came close to the enormous first prize.
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Source: theguardian.com