Across a busy road from Ayr racecourse, Cree Lodge is wedged between the ancient and modern of a bowls club and a skate park, and inclines strongly towards the former. In the dank greyness of yesterday, it cut a desolate sight, its garden overgrown, gates rusting and stable boxes deserted and decaying.

It did not look much of a monument to the last Scottish trainer to win the Ayr Gold Cup, nor to the woman who will try to emulate him today. Yet it was in this, now abandoned yard that Nigel Angus prepared Roman Warrior to win Scotland's favourite Flat race in 1975, a distant date that remains engraved on the frustrated minds of everyone who has since tried and failed to bring the Cup home.

None feels the void more powerfully than Linda Perratt. For 16 years, she was the last resident trainer at Cree Lodge. Angus, retired from training, was one of her owners, a constant reminder of the elusive achievement. Then, late last year, Angus died at just 62 and Perratt moved out of Ayr to the old mining village of Carluke.

Angus will be remembered at a racecourse lunch today, and by a race named in his honour. But the most appropriate memorial would come from victory for the trainer he taught and teased about the Gold Cup over so many years.

Appalachian Trail and Burnwynd Boy represent Perratt and her thriving new partnership with Ian Semple, who handed in his licence to assist her at the 55-box Belstane yard, south-east of Glasgow. The new liaison has produced 29 winners already this year, including a breakthrough success at Royal Ascot, but none would carry the significance of victory today.

Southerners struggle to appreciate the stature of the Ayr Gold Cup, this side of the border. Perratt, an effervescent 44-year-old prone to gales of infectious laughter, describes it better than most. She said: “I used to go to the race as a child, taken along by my parents. It's our group one track, our biggest race, and it means a lot to everyone up here.

“I got into racing by riding out for John Wilson, when he trained at Cree Lodge. It led to a few winners as an amateur for me but, more importantly, I took over at the yard when John left. It was a wrench to leave last year, but the facilities are council-owned and they were getting dilapidated. Coming here was a chance to work with better horses and with very good gallops.”

Perratt recalls being introduced to Angus by her father. She said: “He had two or three horses with me and was a lovely man, but he'd always be slagging me about the two Gold Cups he won and I didn't have much comeback. We've had a few shots at it and I remember Ho Leng was fancied a few years back. But he needed fast ground and it rained for two days beforehand. As a joke, I even got the groundsman to roll the strip of grass in front of our stall but the clerk of the course spotted him and I very quickly got a call.”

She laughed uproariously at this memory, then got serious again. “It's amazing to think Roman Warrior won carrying ten stone, in the days when the weights went down to 7st 12lb,” she said. “It's a much tighter handicap now but it will still be tough for Appalachian Trail with top weight in heavy ground. He's the class horse of the race but it's a big ask.”

Perratt has scaled one such mountain already this year. Big Timer's win in the Wokingham made her the first Scottish trainer to win at Royal Ascot for half-a-century. She was not there to witness it, though, choosing instead to supervise runners on the Ayr track where her heart and hopes reside.