Timmy Murphy has never been one of life’s smilers and there was something apt about his answer to the inevitable question about the three months he spent in prison six years ago. “Was that rock-bottom?” he was asked. “No,” he replied in that deadpan way of his, “you’d have to die to reach rock-bottom.” Many a true word spoken with deadly seriousness.

Wherever rock-bottom may be, Murphy was a long way from there yesterday. “You think about the percentages,” he said as he left the weighing room after an extraordinary day at the office, “a lot of the great jockeys have never won it.” From this generation, AP McCoy, Richard Johnson and Robert Thornton await their first victory in the race. When the backslapping stops and his share of the winnings is spent, Murphy will continue to enjoy that moment when people say: “But you won the National, didn’t you?”

Growing up on Newberry Stud in County Kildare where his dad Jimmy worked, the young Murphy built his own Grand National fence and when he pushed his horse into it he was no longer in a lonely rural field. Dreams sometimes fade but mostly they collide with reality and for all the jockeys who dream of winning the National, just a handful do it.

The timing was about right too because Murphy is 33 and getting to that point in his career where he accepts he’s not going to win all the races he’d like to. He finished second on the outsider Smarty in the 2001 National and as thrilling as that was, he would not have been human if he didn’t fear he’d missed his chance.

But, perhaps, the meaning of Timmy Murphy’s career is that nothing is set in stone. Through the late summer and early autumn of 2002, he didn’t see the seasons change because he was locked up in that London prison. Convicted of a misde-meanour while under the influence of alcohol on a flight from Japan to London, he was given a six-month sentence. The airline that served him the alcohol was the same one that helped in his prosecution. Seven months after 9/11 was the wrong time to be unruly on an aeroplane but even so, many believed the offence did not warrant a custodial sentence. However, it is not the blow that defines a man but his reaction to it. Murphy left prison a changed man, determined never to drink again and for the past six years, he has been teetotal.

It is not his nature to blow his own trumpet and he just got on with it. He knew he and his family would be the beneficiaries and they have been. The innate talent was always there, that much was obvious from the classy ride he gave Terao to record his first Cheltenham Festival winner 11 years ago. Twen-ty-two then, a lot of water has passed under the bridge and not all of it has flowed with Murphy. When Tony McCoy left the then champion trainer Martin Pipe in 2004, Murphy became the retained jockey to Pipe’s leading owner, David Johnson.

It appeared the right opportunity for a gifted horseman but it hasn’t worked as well as it might have. Martin Pipe was never entirely comfortable with Murphy’s stylish but understated horsemanship, although Johnson’s loyalty to the rider has been unwavering. It was appropriate that on the greatest day of his career, the jockey should have ridden Johnson’s horse Comply Or Die to victory.

Neither can anyone’s sense of the appropriate be offended by the fact that the horse is called Comply Or Die. Consider how Murphy felt the morning after that flight from Japan, when it was clear that his mistake would affect the rest of his life. To survive, changes had to be made. Comply or die, indeed.

The last thing the trainer David Pipe said to Murphy as they left the parade ring yesterday was that he believed the horse was “a certainty”. Murphy then went out onto the track and rode the horse like he was just that. “It was a worry going down to the first fence that he might jump it too big but we got him in nice and deep and he flicked out over it,” he said. “After that, we got him into a nice rhythm.”

If Comply Or Die was a certainty, the trick was to keep him out of trouble, to make sure he wasn’t the victim of bad luck. Another horse can bring you down, but only if you get into the wrong position and, for Murphy, there was the dilemma of avoiding trouble but not burning up too much of his horse’s energy. It was a delicate balance but one he achieved masterfully, for that is what the horseman does.

Comply Or Die was never more than five or six lengths off the pace and, racing on the outside, he had a clear view of every fence and Murphy was able to keep an eye on those setting the pace. Both horse and jockey worked in perfect harmony, each understanding the National is not a test of speed or dare-dev-ilry but an exercise in survival.

You watch them at every fence and it was written in their every movement. Murphy sensed his horse knew what was needed and he quietly allowed him to do it. Comply Or Die hardly put a foot astray and over 30 National fences, that’s some achievement. Much of what Murphy does is subtle, appreciated by the horse but not always noticed by the public, but the ease which he took his horse from the outside and positioned him perfectly to take the Canal Turn fence was majestic.

Then, when it came to the long home straight, Murphy’s class was there for all to see. He ranged alongside Snowy Morning going to the final fence, knowing that if he outjumped his rival, he would also demoral-ise him. That’s what he did and then, a little peep over his right shoulder to check on his next challenger, King Johns Castle.

He could see the grey was still going well and so he got down to work on Comply Or Die. Nationals aren’t easily won, he told his horse with a few cracks of the whip, and then they put their heads down and raced for their lives. The horse had travelled four-and-a-half miles for his moment of glory. The horseman had made a much longer journey for his.