Whatever else the festive season brings for the connections of Paisley Park, they are unlikely to unwrap anything to match their first win in a Grade One race, delivered by a six-year-old in a compelling JLT Hurdle here on Saturday. “Fifty yards from the line, I finally realised what a monkey it was on my back,” Aidan Coleman, the winning jockey, said. “It’s great to win, but I’m almost embarrassed it’s taken me this long.”

Coleman and Paisley Park were two lengths in front of the 40-1 shot West Approach at the line, after a race packed with incident from the off.

Two previous winners of the race went to post but neither reached the finish, the first to depart being Sam Spinner, last year’s winner, who apparently tried to refuse at the first and all but dislodged his jockey, Joe Colliver. He then completed the job at the second, before Unowhatimeanharry, successful here two years ago, suffered a fall early on the second circuit.

“I saw it all,” Coleman said. “Barry got a horrible fall going down the hill and I saw Sam Spinner, but this lad, he coped with it all very well. He has a lovely way of racing, he sits cold nearly but if you know him, you can just trust him. He’s just a proper good horse that you don’t know you’re sitting on until you go to pick him up, and when you do he’s always there for you.

“I always played it down, but every time I did an interview it was always mentioned that I’d never had a Grade One winner and I’m not far off 1,000 winners and it’s my 11th or 12th year riding. It’s taken me too long, but it meant a lot to do it now.”

Emma Lavelle, the winner’s trainer, has also suffered several near-misses at the highest level, but she quickly passed the credit for Saturday’s win to owner Andrew Gemmell. “To be honest, he mapped the whole thing out,” Lavelle said. “I was superfluous. He means a lot to him, this horse, and this has been his plan from the start. I just did what I was told.”

Gemmell, who has been blind since birth, was also enjoying his first Grade One win as an owner and is already counting the days until the Stayers’ Hurdle at Cheltenham in March, which could be Paisley Park’s next race.

“The plan is it’s 82 days until Cheltenham, and straight there,” Gemmell said. “I did think we had a chance today. I’ve had horses on my own for about 10 years, but I’ve been in syndicates for about 20 and I’ve been massively interested in racing since I was a boy. I can remember Right Tack winning the Guineas and that was a long time ago [1969].”

Paisley Park has now won all three of his races this season but finished down the field on his only previous start at Cheltenham, when 13th in the Albert Bartlett Novice Hurdle in March. That may concern some punters when they come to weigh up the Festival form, but Lavelle is not inclined to blame the track for his disappointing run.

“I’m going to draw a line through Cheltenham last year,” she said. “That was what was scaring me today about the [very soft] ground because he didn’t handle it in the Albert Bartlett, but I think he wasn’t right, rather than it was Cheltenham or the ground.”

Paisley Park is a 12-1 chance for the Festival, while Ben Pauling’s Kildisart, who edged out Activial by a short head in the graduation chase earlier on the card, is a 33-1 chance for the JLT Novice Chase.