The 34-year-old will have ridden a record 16 times without success if he does not win at Aintree on Saturday
It is emblematic of Richard Johnson's quietly remarkable riding career that the record he is likely to break in Saturday's Grand National is the one he does not want. If Planet Of Sound, a 40-1 outsider, finishes anywhere but first this weekend, Johnson will have ridden in 16 Nationals without success, and no jockey in the 163-year history of the race will have been to Aintree so frequently without reaching the winner's enclosure.
Johnson currently shares the record for not winning the Grand National with Jeff King, though King could be said to be marginally less successful as he did not finish better than third in his 15 starts in the race. Johnson took second place on What's Up Boys in 2002, when he looked like the winner until Bindaree swept past on the run to the line, though his record also includes falls at something of a holy trinity of National fences: Becher's Brook, The Chair and the first.
Until Tony McCoy won the race two years ago – at the 15th time of asking – his annual insistence beforehand that his lack of a National winner did not bother him was something of an Aintree tradition. So too was the fact that no one really believed him. Johnson, though, is much more convincing when he says that not winning the National does not cost him any sleep.
"I've just not been on the right horse, it's as simple as that," he says. "What's Up Boys had a very good chance and he was only collared on the line.
"I'm in a very fortunate position in that I've ridden lots of very, very good horses in my career and I'm the last one to complain about not doing something. I just feel very lucky to have got what I've had.
"Of course, it's something I'd like to do but there's no point in my worrying about it because worrying about it doesn't achieve anything. I just have to do my best come Saturday."
Johnson is 34, which is the beginning of the twilight years for a jump jockey, and in addition to the likelihood that he will end his career as the most successful rider never to win the National, it is increasingly probable that he will also be the best never to be champion. Had McCoy pursued a career in anything other than National Hunt racing, Johnson would now be acclaimed as the outstanding rider in jumps history, as his career total of nearly 2,400 wins is well ahead of jockeys such as Richard Dunwoody, Peter Scudamore and John Francome, all of whom won the title at least three times.
Yet McCoy, who at 37 is three years older than Johnson, is an almost exact contemporary of his perennial rival in racing terms, as they won the conditionals championship, for young riders, in consecutive seasons in the mid-1990s. While McCoy has won the title in every one of the 16 campaigns since, Johnson has finished runner-up no fewer than 13 times.
It is in the nature of the National, though, that every generation of riders will have individuals whose luck is always out over the big fir fences. Francome and Scudamore both retired without a National to their name, while Jonjo O'Neill, who trained McCoy's winner Don't Push It two years ago and will saddle Synchronised, the favourite, this time around, never even completed the course.
"It's just one of those things that you've got to take on the chin," O'Neill said on Thursday. "I kind of accepted that as a trainer as well, to be honest, after Clan Royal got narrowly beaten and then got taken out by loose horses [when going well in the lead at Becher's second time]. I thought it's just one of those races that's not for you.
"If you relax and take it that way, then maybe it will come your way. There's nothing you can do about it. You could ride anything years ago and it might happen for you but now it's a really good handicap. You have to be on a good horse to win it and they have to like the place too. His horse has got top-class form and he's got a real chance, and there's always a story with the National."
O'Neill's point is that while the National is still very difficult to win, it is the quality of the opposition that is as much of a challenge in a modern National as the course itself was in the past. Where once a rider needed luck to get on the right horse, now it may be necessary to be the most fortunate of the many contenders during the race itself.
It is a sign of the increasing quality of the National that Planet Of Sound, who won a top-class race in Ireland in April 2010, is rated as only the seventh best horse in the race. He has failed to add to that win in four subsequent starts but Johnson is hopeful that he will show his best form on Saturday.
"It's a massive achievement for the race to have the Gold Cup winner running, because in years gone by not many Gold Cup horses would have been sent up here," Johnson says. "This year, realistically, there's 30 horses in the race that have high-class form and, if they get luck in running and everything else, you can make a good case for a lot of them. Mine's a very good horse and, with a clear round of jumping, I can't see any reason why he shouldn't be right there at the last fence."
Before the National Johnson will have several good rides at the meeting. But will the prospect of winning — or not winning — the National itself be nagging away at him all the while?
"To be honest," he says, "I'll only start to think about it around 9 o'clock on Saturday morning."