It starts today for Paul Nicholls. Long ago, he marked off this date as the launchpad for his latest effort to turn primacy ever closer to perfection. Through his escalating deeds, Nicholls is a hostage to public expectation but he has his own way of coping. “Never look back,” he said yesterday. “Last season is history.”

Such rich history, though. Last season, Nicholls trained the first three home in the Cheltenham Gold Cup, won 13 grade one races and more prize-money than the champion Flat trainer, Aidan O'Brien. He would require the self-deprivation of a monk to avoid a few rosy reflections on that lot.

Complacency, however, is an alien word. Yesterday, he had that unmistakeable light of battle again. Bouncing out of his office after confirming 11 runners for Saturday's two televised jumps meetings, he looked like a schoolboy starting his holidays rather than a man setting out on seven months of such unrelenting scrutiny that any given Saturday without three winners will be popularly deemed a failure.

Suggest that he has to find new challenges and he looks askance. “Every horse we bring in is a new challenge,” he said. And, of course, there are always unconquered peaks. The Champion Hurdle is one omission he wants to remedy - perhaps with Pierrot Lunaire, who reappears at Aintree in a fortnight - while everyone knows he has been next to hopeless in the Grand National. He makes a joke of it, but don't be fooled by that.

Nicholls also makes much of his job being “a business” - and, indeed, the turnover in horse trading and new amenities is eye-popping. Yet it is the kind of dream business that might feature in that television lager commercial... “if Carlsberg did racing stables...”

Nothing much happens in Ditcheat other than cheese-making and racehorse training and the two co-exist contentedly. Largely, this is because Paul Barber, who owns the dairy, is also Nicholls's landlord. A modern-day squire, you might say, Barber has even rescued and relocated the village store, which now sells a daily mountain of racing newspapers you would not find in many farm shops.

Barber is chief of Nicholls's inner circle, a close-knit group of ever-present family and friends that gives the yard its air of intimate efficiency. It is no coincidence that the horses - much the most decorated and valuable string ever assembled for jump racing - look uniformly relaxed as they wander the roads on the way to the gallops.

On this stunning autumn morning, there is a conspicuous absentee. Denman, the Gold Cup winner, must stay sulking in his box, his flat-eared scowl softened only by any offer of Polo mints. His exercise remains restricted to walking as he recuperates from the heart scare that caused such consternation.

“It worried the hell out of me until we knew what it was,” Nicholls said. “He was losing condition and getting so tired that he wouldn't even put his head over the door. The treatment knocked him back further but there's an 85 per cent chance he'll have no further problems and we'll look to run him just once before Cheltenham, then go on to Aintree and maybe Punchestown.”

Ireland features boldly in Nicholls's plans, though he plays down suggestions that he wants to do an O'Brien and be champion trainer in both islands. “That's been exaggerated, but we will send more horses than before. The money is good and it suits some of ours well.”

The commuting has started already, Dear Villez and Marodima having travelled to Limerick for the Munster National meeting tomorrow. Kauto Star will start his campaign at Down Royal on November 1 and Neptune Collonges will qualify for frequent flyer status, as his programme includes at least three Irish trips, starting at Leopardstown over Christmas.

Rivals should beware. The perfectionism that characterises Nicholls is burning fiercely again. “Tomorrow is the start and it will give us a gauge on fitness,” he explained. “Then it's Cheltenham next week and flat out from here on.”

His relish is plain as he completes schooling a horse called Herecomesthetruth. The truth is that Nicholls wants to keep raising the bar he has raised so dizzily high, and few would dare say it is beyond him.