In the 2016/2017 season, Elliott pushed the champion to a couple of hundred thousand euro. In terms of numbers, he had twice as many runners as Mullins, and his tally of 193 winners was 13 more than the champ, but the Closutton team held form through to Punchestown and picked up those valuable end-of-season races to ensure another title.

The close call had most onlookers predicting the Meath man’s day would soon come but what that close call did was to galvanise Mullins to push even harder to retain his crown. In 2018 there were just two winners between them, with Mullins responsible for 212, but the championship is decided on prize money, and, on that score, he was quite considerably clear.

The gap increased to more than two million in 2019 but was back to a fraction of that in the covid-curtailed season of 19/20. Elliott served out a six-month suspension in 2021 and the gap has since grown quite significantly, to the point that Mullins set a new record of 237 winners in 22/23, resulting in total prize-money just shy of €7.3m, almost twice that earned by Elliott runners.

But Elliott currently leads this season’s race, with 116 winners to Mullins’ 103, and has a lead of almost half a million. In the context of the season, it is quite insignificant, particularly as the champ is just beginning to take the covers off his leading performers, but Elliott remains focused on more than just bridging that gap.

He has invested heavily in a young team which he hopes will develop to give him that thus-far elusive maiden champion trainer title, but also admits to having an evolving perspective on life, one altered by the time he spent on the sidelines serving a high-profile suspension.

“If you had asked me about that two or three years ago, it was all I would have thought about,” admitted Elliott. “If you ask me my ambition in life, it is to be champion trainer, but I probably look at life a little differently now to how I did before what happened.

“It’s what I want to do and what I would love to do and my aim in life, but you look at things and people a lot differently.

“I’m probably selfish and all I care about is training winners. It’s not ideal sometimes but I love what I do. I love training winners. I worked for a man called Martin Pipe and he loved it, and I’m probably unfortunate that I was born in the same era as a man called Willie Mullins.

"Willie makes us all better and hungrier and I just like to do my best and keep him honest."

This season — and probably the next one, too — is likely to be too soon for that breakthrough, but there is one title which Elliott believes could be within hailing distance.

Key to all the success in Cullentra is the team of young riders associated with the yard, and as well as topping the charts himself, Elliott hopes that one day he will be able to help Jack Kennedy, the stable’s number one jockey, to reach the summit.

"I would love to see him be champion jockey and I think it's going to happen someday,” Elliott predicted. “Whether that is this year, next year, or the year after I don't know. He has 60 winners already this season and I think last year when he had the fall during the first week in January, he had 77 winners.

“He is ahead of last year and it looks like he is in a better position, to be honest.”