Ruby Walsh can still remember the feeling. Just three fences to go and he was closing on the leaders. His horse had ignored the collision with the previous fence and still had loads of run in him.

The horse was a player and so was Walsh. He was back where he was supposed to be. At the very peak of the game. But then horse and rider reached the fence and endured a signal failure.

"He hit the top of it, I came off and I thought: `Christ, here we go again,"' Walsh recalls. "There I was on the flat of my arse looking up at the finish."

And that's the story of Walsh, Rince Ri and the 2000 Cheltenham Gold Cup. It's a frustrating tale of what might have been.

"I was travelling well enough. I'm not saying I'd have beaten the winner (Looks Like Trouble) but I would definitely have been in the shake-up for the places," he adds.

Just 23 days later and there was no what, if or but. Walsh entered the record books when Papillon became the second successive Irish winner of the world's most famous steeplechase.

It's jump racing's most powerful temptation that disaster can turn into triumph at the very next fence. But Walsh didn't need Rince Ri to teach him that.

It had after all been only 12 days previous to the Gold Cup that he had returned from over six months on the injury list. A horrific leg fracture in the Czech Republic in September had almost mended when Walsh fractured it again in early January. His attempted comeback had been a fraction premature. "Let's say I wasn't in the greatest humour when Florida Pearl won the Hennessy in February. Watching somebody else win on horses you should be riding is not fun," he says with a level-headed approach that indicates Walsh can relish the highlights without forgetting the darker times.

For instance, he is adamant that winning the Aintree National and the Irish National within 16 days has had no major impact on his everyday life.

"What it has done is taken some of the pressure off in big races. I've proven myself in these big races now and that can only help my confidence," he says. Admirably pragmatic considering those 16 days were the best any jockey could dream of. And just for luck, he also won the £120,000 Heineken Gold Cup with Commanche Court at the start of May.

"No one could ever imagine such a month in the first place, never mind think it could ever happen again," he says before freely admitting the magical nine minutes and nine seconds at Liverpool could have turned into an anti-climax.

"Papillon could easily have gone the other way. Sometimes he just doesn't take an interest in his races. But he just loved Liverpool. He loved the occasion, he loved the ground and he jumped from fence to fence," Walsh recounts.

And half the betting world loved Papillon after an extraordinary public gamble. The punters could hardly have had a cooler young man to guide their investment.

"It got a little tight jumping the Chair and he landed out a long way after jumping the Canal Turn. We lost eight or 10 lengths doing that and I remember thinking that might cost me. But really we'd a great run through.

"I wasn't sure at the second last if I'd win. At the last I was sure I'd beat Norman (Williamson on Mely Moss) but I was worried about something else coming from behind," he says.

Nothing ever did. Asked for one principal Aintree National memory and Walsh says: "I'll never forget the last 50 yards when I knew I was going to win. That will always be with me."

As will Commanche Court's subsequent heroics when the little horse quashed any concerns about his stamina with a couple of true quality performances.

"He worked very well on the Curragh a week before the Irish National and I felt he would have a great chance if he got the three-mile, five-furlong trip. We were shooting in the dark on that but we crept away early on in the race and he jumped his way into it," he says.

"We were a bit lucky at Punchestown (when a faller at the third-last fence generated mayhem) and he could have been brought down, but everyone needs a bit of luck sometime."

Which is true, except that Walsh endured enough bad fortune to earn any subsequent luck. And once he got it, his talent squeezed the most out of it.