Paul Nicholls has effectively conceded his trainers' title by saying “the gap is too big” to rival Nicky Henderson after Aintree.
Nicholls emerged from the Grand National festival £331,000 adrift of the 66-year-old Seven Barrows handler, the only trainer to have stopped him claiming the title during his ten wins since 2005-06.
Speakin on Sunday, he said: “The championship is beyond reach now. If we were talking about £200,000 we might have a chance and it would be worth having a real go, but the gap is too big now.
“I'd have to win everything worth winning between now and the end of the season, and Nicky win nothing, and that's not going to happen.
“We've got loads left to run, and we'll have both Arpege D'Alene and [last year's winner] Vicente in the Scottish National, but I'll just be running those horses I was going to run in the nice races that are left anyway. There's no point chasing, but we'll still try to win as many races as we can before the end of the season and then regroup.”
Nicholls held a strong hand going into Saturday's rand National with five runners among the 40 to start, but Vicente was brought down at the first – coincidentally by Henderson's runner Cocktails At Dawn – and Saphir Du Rheu fell at the 11th, leaving him out of the money.
Colin Tizzard's sensational Aintree, when he saddled five winners in two days, moved him to within £193,000 of Nicholls – who has set himself a new target for the remainder of the campaign
He said: “What I'd like to do now is train 156 winners, which would be the most I've ever trained in a season. We had 155 in 2008-09, and are on 152 now, so that's not unrealistic.”
He added: “It's been a brilliant season, and I'm particularly proud of the multiple scorers like Frodon and San Benedeto. We're just lacking the horses for the very biggest races, but as Alex [Sir Alex Ferguson] said, ‘You can't win the Premiership every year, and you are only as good as the players you've got'. There's a lot in that.”
