The toughest job in Scottish sport?
For many that would be the lot of Gordon Strachan as he leads the Scotland football team to pot four for the Euro 2016 qualifiers.
But, for this week at least, Strachan can vacate the hot seat in favour of Scotland's racehorse trainers. The wait for a home-trained winner of the William Hill Ayr Gold Cup has been so long it makes the travails of the national football team seem little more than the blink of an eye. This rare beast was last sighted in 1975 when the massive chestnut Roman Warrior carried a record-breaking 10 stone to win for Nigel Angus.
Roman Warrior was a true local hero - Angus trained just across the road from Ayr at Cree Lodge stables - but the two horses who would seem to have the best chance of emulating him this year come from the Renfrewshire yard of Jim Goldie.
The man knows the score, which is 19-0 in his case, since his first runner in the race in 2000. "Oh, I've been here before. It's usually a big build-up and then I hide," Goldie said, his laugh mixed with mock horror. "It's just a race we haven't been winning - like Scotland winning the World Cup. OK, that's very unlikely, but surely we should win the Ayr Gold Cup?"
This year's hopes for Scotland lie mainly with the Goldie pair Jack Dexter and Hawkeyethenoo, who created his own bit of history as the first Scottish-trained winner of the Stewards' Cup at Goodwood last year.
This will be Hawkeyethenoo's fourth attempt in the Gold Cup after he has floundered in tough ground for the last three years, the worst coming 12 months ago when sustained rain made the six-furlong straight a stamina test more akin to the Scottish Grand National.
However, it was just those conditions which played to the strengths of stable companion Jack Dexter, who ploughed through the mud to win the Bronze Cup, the second of two consolation races for horses too far down the handicap to make the field for the main event.
Such has been Jack Dexter's relentless progress since that Goldie has long forgotten any worries on that score this time around, and his horse tops the weights for the Gold Cup on 9st 10lb.
"We've made a bit of a mess of handicapping him," Goldie said candidly. "But he's a Group horse and it probably takes something like that to win the race. He carried 9-8 last year and, as a three-year-old, he did a similar time to the Gold Cup winner. Now he's a year older, a year stronger."
Hawkeyethenoo, at the age of seven, may have stopped improving but showed he is still a force to be reckoned with by finishing fourth in the Group One Sprint Cup at Haydock Park last weekend when the rain once again landed on his parade.
"He might just get his ground this year," Goldie said. "They've still got good ground and, providing we don't get a monsoon, it should be OK for him. He probably ran to a mark of about 109 - he's rated 106 - at Haydock so he's got a chance on that form.
"The Scottish public back him every time - the First Minister tips him up - even if the ground has been against him. At least with Jack Dexter as well I don't have to worry about the ground so much and Hawkeye doesn't have to carry the hopes of a nation on his own."
Strachan would understand that.
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