O'Grady feels the pressure with Nick

It was fun while it lasted, but common-sense won out. Nick Dundee goes in the Royal and SunAlliance Chase, so now it's just a matter of shouting him home.

If only it were that simple. The horse has looked so good this season that last week's "Nick Dundee for the Gold Cup" bandwagon had no difficulty picking up speed.

Possibly it was the drying out ground that made John Magnier choose discretion over valour, but the result is a monumental headache for Edward O'Grady.

"I feel enormous pressure now," admits the Ballynonty, Co Tipperary, trainer. "There wasn't that much when it looked like he was going for the Gold Cup because he wasn't going to be one of the favourites for that. But the pressure is extraordinary now."

Blase statements about just having to shout a horse home can do that, especially when a entire country is making them. Not being responsible for the vehicle of those proclamations allows a terrible latitude.

But Cheltenham has a habit of puncturing expectations, and, despite his wealth of experience, O'Grady realises that now more than ever. Fourteen more festival winners followed O'Grady's first with Mr Midland in 1974, but the past has no relevance to today.

"Nothing comes easier with experience. Enthusiasm combined with youth allows you not to see pitfalls. I still have enthusiasm, but I'm now so aware of the pitfalls, it just makes Cheltenham even more awesome," he says. Especially since the festival is the acid test of a trainer.

O'Grady has a history of getting it right when it counts most, but in racing it's the next race that is always the most important.

"Cheltenham horses are trained for one specific day. We can all get a horse fit and right for a day, but for the festival it has to be a specific day. That's the pressure. It has to be right," he says.

Which is why O'Grady is less than gutted about missing out the Gold Cup. His logic is compelling.

"If Nick Dundee can't win the SunAlliance this season, then he wouldn't win the Gold Cup. On that basis I would always opt for the easier race, simply because I want to win. Having said that, this horse looks like he has the potential to become a Gold Cup horse regardless of what happens in the SunAlliance," O'Grady explains.

Potential is what Nick Dundee is all about at the moment. So much so that his trainer sticks by the view that he could become the best chaser he has ever had.

"Jack Of Trumps was brilliant but in a different way. He won Irish Cesarewitches and that, but I don't think he truly stayed. He certainly wasn't a true Gold Cup stayer, but Nick Dundee looks to have the makings of a true stayer.

"For preference I'd like soft ground for him, but we are quite prepared to run on what we get. I have no worries on that score. Eugene O'Sullivan, who used to train him, thinks he is better on good," he says.

All of which sounds dangerously like talking up Nick Dundee's chance. He appears so good that it's difficult not to, but O'Grady is too cagey for that. "After 28 years in this game I realise it's never that easy. No race is. The SunAlliance will be difficult. Splendid and Lord Of The River, for instance, are very talented. This will be no cakewalk," he argues.

The satisfaction of victory, however, comes from competition. It may be no cakewalk, but if Nick Dundee wins that will make the roars resound even more.