Ask anyone to name a couple of National Hunt trainers in the Cotswolds and the chances are that they’ll come back with Jonjo O’Neill and Nigel Twiston-Davies.

But while they have been very successful over the years, they are by no means the only big-hitters in the world of racing in Gloucestershire.

There are other trainers who are making names for themselves, including Ben Pauling who is based near Bourton-on-the-Water, just a short gallop from O’Neill and Twiston-Davies.

Pauling moved to this part of the world in 2013 and has been making very good progress. He’s been clocking up the winners consistently and with the Cheltenham Festival just round the corner he’s certainly looking for more.

And the one thing he won’t be doing when he heads to Cheltenham is going there just to make up the numbers.

“We’ll be taking a select team of four or five horses to the Festival,” he told The Local Answer. “Every horse that we take will have a chance of getting a place.”

Pauling, the one-time assistant to many times champion trainer Nicky Henderson, knows what it’s like to win at the Festival as the main man, of course, after Willoughby Court won the Neptune Investment Management Novices’ Hurdle in 2017.

The subsequent loss of Willoughby Court – he was put down earlier this year after losing his battle against an infection in his joint – was deeply upsetting for Pauling and everyone associated with the stable and it will take time for the pain to ease.

Another of his Grade I winners, Barters Hill, was retired at the back end of last year because of injury so it is easy to see why Pauling has described this season as “a bit stop-start”.

And yet there has been plenty for Pauling to smile about too, including the success of Kildisart in the novice chase on Festival Trials Day at Cheltenham at the end of January.

When Pauling spoke to The Local Answer, no decision had been made on which race Kildisart would take part in at the Festival, but the route for another of his stable stars – Global Citizen – was much clearer.

The plan is for him to run in the Champion Hurdle on day one of the Festival and that will provide Pauling with another milestone.

“It will be our first runner in one of the blue riband events at Cheltenham,” he said. “We’ve never had a runner in the Champion Chase, Gold Cup or Champion Hurdle before.”

Rated around the 25-1 mark by the bookies, Pauling is very hopeful that Global Citizen will be competitive in the two miles and half a furlong race.

And if Pauling says he’s worth looking out for, then he’s surely worth an each-way bet. Pauling was a regular in the winner’s enclosure at Cheltenham, and indeed, all over the country, during his years spent in Lambourn as Nicky Henderson’s assistant.

He looks back on that time with great fondness, saying: “I will never forget working for Nicky, I learned so much from him.”

As well as being champion trainer five times, Henderson has won all the big races many times over and it is competing in the high profile races that really gets Pauling’s juices flowing.

While admitting that he’d like to end the season with around 50 winners, he insists that the numbers “don’t matter to me”.

“I want to be training horses at the top of the tree,” he continued. “We’ve had a couple of Grade I horses and that’s what we’re hoping to replicate in the future although it’s never easy.”

For a start you need good horses but Pauling is certainly optimistic because he says there are “some very nice horses” in his 70-plus strong stable.

A select few will be heading to Cheltenham and they will all be primed and ready for four days of intense racing.

“We won’t be taking any social horses to Cheltenham, we know how difficult it is to win at the Festival,” he said.

“Everybody turns it up a bit at this time of year, the horses go just that stride quicker.

“Your horses have to be trained to a supersonic level, they have to fight for everything.”

This year’s Cheltenham Festival is from 12th to 15th March.