Horses racing over fences has sometimes been seen as too complicated, too mired in the ways of betting, form and weight to draw in the ignorant, disinterested or those too lazy to find out about the sport, i.e. the casual onlooker. Racing is different to other sports.
The alliance between man and animal is unpredictable, romantic, emotive and irrational. Betting determines how good a horse is rated. It may be sick and we wouldn't know it. It may be disinterested, tired, unfocused, out of the "zone". How would we know? Only in horse racing do rank outsiders regularly romp home as winners. It has an allure and a population of its own who speak a different language, breathe a different air.
Rarely does a horse or trainer rise above the racing fraternity and become known to those outside. The trainer Vincent O'Brien achieved a status outside the sport because of his phenomenal success. The horse Arkle, a three-times Cheltenham Gold Cup winner, was another name that transcended racing. Perhaps, too, Red Rum. Both were animals who captured as many imaginations as they did big races.
Latterly Danoli and Tom Foley have captured the imagination of people who perhaps only occasionally look in on the sport after that extraordinary win at wild odds last year. Foley is the horse's front man - he talks for Danoli. He tells us of the animal's welfare, aspirations and foibles. He informs us of the miracles performed on the surgeon's table after Danoli broke a leg at Aintree. He regales us with the story of his horse's remarkable comeback. And it was remarkable.
Most horses which break a leg are put down on the course because of the immense difficulty in creating the right environment for the bone to mend. Trying to stabilise a thoroughbred for months on end is generally seen as an exercise in futility. Even the great Arkle was finally destroyed.
Danoli not only survived but Foley brought him back a winner.
"You could see the fetlock joint swelling when we took the boot off and he was in fierce pain. He was trembling all over, there was a white froth coming out of him and he kept nodding all the time. Very, very few come back," remembers Foley.
Speaking from the backdrop of his bleak concrete-block and corrugated roof stables deep in Co Carlow, Foley has sold a horse on the merits of its bravery.
"He'd run till he drops," he says. Foley has spoken with a passion and an articulation that brings him uncommonly close to the animal, and the public have bought into the relationship.
"I'll be happy as long as he comes home safe. That is even more important than winning," says the trainer.
In reality, neither Danoli or Foley has yet won the volume of top races to warrant a book on their racing careers, yet that is what we are now being asked to stack into this year's Christmas stocking.
Danoli The People's Champion (Robson Books, £16.95) is indicative of the public acclaim and the unusual circumstances that have given rise to both man and horse becoming minor celebrities.
Over the last five years, Foley has taken the horse to many winning enclosures, including those at last year's Hennessy Cognac Gold Cup at Leopardstown, two Smurfit Champion Hurdles, two Aintree Hurdles and a Novice Hurdle. Before that, both were unknown in the world of racing. In all Danoli has won £320,759 in prize money and people clamber down to the farm in Co Carlow. The British media, particularly, have beaten a well-worn path to Foley's modest patch.
It has been the small-time trainer with a once in a lifetime horse that has drawn the interest. In his cramped yard set against the backdrop of the Blackstairs Mountains, Foley has added on several new stables on the strength of his horse's performances. Danoli has made Foley too.
There are many traits of the trainer that ought to be admired. He is a colourful story-teller and an unpretentious voice in a sport that can sometimes exude privilege.
"He out-bested everyone," he says of Danoli, who is owned by bone-setter, Dan O'Neill. "It's typical of the horse. He loves racing, loves to see the saddle coming."
But Danoli The People's Champion, written by Tom Foley in conjunction with Michael Taub, formerly of the Daily Mirror and Sunday Express, is occasionally interesting but often irritating. Anyone who has listened to Foley will also contest that too often the book falls short of reflecting the authentic voice of one of the most popular trainers in the country.
"I was lifted bodily into the winner's enclosure and, once there, hoisted high onto the shoulders of my enthusiastic compatriots", says Foley in the book after Danoli's win in the Sun Alliance Novice Hurdle in 1994.
It grates because it does not sound like the colloquial Foley speaking. It's the Sunday Express. The tone is also sometimes patronising and remorselessly offers the stereotype. Occasionally it is incredulous. Take the post-Aintree scene in the stables where Danoli stands injured. "Danoli looks at me with his big sad eyes as if to say `I did my best but the pain was too much'." Uuuugh!
Or after the Novice Hurdle win: "Anybody with even a trace of Irish in their blood must have backed the horse and judging by the scale of festivities, they'd all had plenty on."
Tom Foley's triumph is that he has trained and popularised a gifted horse. He is aiming for this season's Gold Cup at Cheltenham and if all goes well he could claim it. The mended bone in his foreleg is a worry and Danoli's tendency to sometimes fall will only heighten the stakes. Foley, though, has made his money, and despite huge offers the animal is not for sale. It is safety that preoccupies his mind.
"It's a long way home with an empty horse box. It's hard to start up the next day," he says. "Some might kick you, some might bite you, but you get to know them and you don't mind."