NO one knows more about the old saying of "if at first you don’t succeed then try, try again" then luckless racehorse owner Bill Davis.

The 87-year-old has been in the game for more than a quarter of a century without a win to his name.

Down the years, he has breed 16 horses and raced seven at dozens of meets with no silverware to show for all the hard work.

That was until the Betway Median Auction Maiden Stakes at Lingfield on Wednesday when Ayr of Elegance lived up to her 1-2 favourite’s billing to romp home to victory and end years of bad luck and near misses for her Storrington owner.

The victory was all the sweeter because of the trials and tribulations Ayr of Elegance had been through having been raised an orphan.

Bill told The Argus he was “over the moon” with the victory after so many years and said it was “madness” that kept him in the game for so long.

He said he had always had a love of the horses and “accumulated a few bob” from running three pubs down the years in Worthing, Uckfield Coldwaltham near Pulborough to go into horseracing.

Bill said: “My grandmother had two brothers who were jockeys but I don’t think they were very good because you don’t find them much in the records and I guess I followed them.

“I did think about giving up. You think for a day but then you have a night’s sleep and decide to carry on.

“A couple of the horses I sold went on to win for their new owners."

Trainer Philip Hide from Findon said: “So much has gone wrong, the circumstances have just been against him so many times.

“We talked about it afterwards and we agreed it actually wasn’t that enjoyable because we were just waiting for something to go wrong.

“She looked like all the money that she would win here last year but she ended up being beaten by a nostril, then she was given the race and then it was taken back from her on appeal.

“He’s had 16 horses and there are stories to go with all of them.

“He is the epitome of that old English spirit of never giving up although there is more to it than just that, it would take a long time to really get to the bottom of it.

“He’s not a wealthy man, he is not someone who is rolling around in surplus money, he has put all of his resources into this and it is quite something that he has done.”