‘It’s moved down a class since its last outing,’ Clive said to me, checking the horse’s form on the Racing Post app. ‘And I reckon the handicapper has been quite generous.’

So, it appeared, did everyone else, and its price on the bookmakers’ boards shortened to seven-to-two before the off.

Unlike in the first, Jimmy Shilstone was ready and eager when the starter dropped his flag, and he led the field of ten into the first fence, although, this time, the pace in the early stages was quite moderate.

Night Shadow popped over the first, landing a length in front of his nearest rival, and by the second he had extended his lead to three lengths. But it was at the next fence that things went horribly wrong—or perfectly right, depending on your point of view.

The middle of the five fences in the back straight is an ‘open ditch’.

According to the BHA, there has to be at least one open ditch every mile in a steeplechase, and at Catterick there are two open ditches every complete circuit, easily exceeding the minimum requirement.

An open ditch is basically a plain fence with a ditch dug out in front of it, with a wooden rail up to two feet high set ahead of the ditch. It effectively increases the ‘spread’ of the fence from at least six feet to eight or more. But these days, due to the general reduction in fence sizes because of horse-injury concerns, most runners have no problems with them.

Back when I was riding, the actual ditches could be up to six feet wide, making these obstacles ones to really worry about. The Chair, in the Grand National at Aintree, the most famous open ditch in all of horse racing, once needed a mighty leap for a horse to cover its six-foot-wide ditch plus its five-foot-high and four-foot-thick fence in a single bound.

But Catterick isn’t Aintree, and the open ditches here are of minimum specification. Notwithstanding that, Night Shadow made a complete hash of it, and I, for one, put the error totally down to the jockey rather than the horse.

For some reason that escaped me, other than to think that he did it on purpose, Jimmy Shilstone asked his mount to put in an extra stride when, to all of us watching, he was already perfectly set for the fence.

Night Shadow didn’t like it—he knew what he was doing—but, nevertheless, he complied with the clear request from his rider, shortened and put in an extra stride, which left him far too close to the front rail at take-off. The horse clipped the rail with his front hooves, twisted in mid-air and landed four-square on top of the birch fence before sprawling onto the turf and sending Jimmy Shilstone somersaulting over his head, much to the obvious dismay of those watching in the grandstand.