Charlie Mann had told his wife, Susannah, that he would take her on a ski-ing holiday if Merchants Friend gave him a first Festival win. “I was nearly on the phone to the travel agent,” he would say later after the most agonising of near-misses in the 2004 Fulke Walwyn Kim Muir Chase. Maximize (40/1) won the race for trainer Martin Pipe and jockey Darren Edwards.
