The refusal of Manchester City footballer Wayne Bridge to shake the hand of his former Chelsea team-mate John Terry in a dispute over the favours of a lingerie model received roughly the same attention in the media last Saturday as the outbreak of a new war in the Middle East. Racing hardly got a look-in, even on the sports pages. But the sporting moment I relished was the high five — well, actually, it was more of a low five — as a mud-spattered Paddy Brennan slipped from the saddle of Razor Royale after the Racing Post Chase and slapped his hand into the open palm of an immaculate Carl Llewellyn, business partner to trainer Nigel Twiston-Davies. That and the grins which passed between them told a whole story. One ultimately professional former jockey was acknowledging to another at the peak of his powers a case of ‘Job Done’, and a job done at considerable risk not just to life and limb but also to reputation.
Coming to the last fence locked in combat with the grey Nacarat, whom the relentlessly hungry champion jockey Tony McCoy was sure to be driving every inch to the line, and not wanting Nacarat to be left in the lead any longer, Paddy had nothing much left in the tank on Razor Royale. Yet he threw his heart over the fence and dared his mount to follow him.
It was one of those moments when total commitment can make you a hero or reduce you to zero. The margin between the two here was no thicker than a lingerie model’s thong. Although he admitted that his horse was emptying and that he didn’t have anything left, Paddy ‘went for gold’ — only for his mount to land on top of the fence.
‘I lost everything,’ he admitted afterwards. ‘I didn’t have time to get the reins back. I was holding on to nothing but my body and my stick. With that man McCoy on your inside, he never goes away, so you can’t give him a chance. The person who introduced me to race-riding said that going to the last fence you “come up” or die, and I nearly died. But that’s the way I’ll always be. You do things like that because you want to win. The race is over — and I won.’
Somehow Razor Royale scrambled over the fence, regained some momentum and the pair duelled to the line with McCoy and the popular, almost white Nacarat, a bold attacker of fences who could become as much of a crowd-pleaser as the famous grey Desert Orchid. He, too, had given his all in gruelling conditions and had clouted one, unusually, four out. In the end Razor Royale, with his tack dangling loose, won by just a neck.
It really isn’t a sport for the faint-hearted. But it is, thank God, a sport of the big-hearted. One of the first to come over and congratulate Paddy Brennan with a genuine and generous grin was Nacarat’s trainer Tom George, who will surely have more glory days with his charge.
Earlier, Philip Hobbs’s Clova Island had given a welcome boost to our Dozen To Follow, winning the handicap hurdle at 6–1 in the fashion of a horse with a future over fences. Another who certainly has that is the Paul Nicholls-trained Escort’men, who was remarkably allowed to start at the price of 16–1 after falling at the first in his previous race at Taunton. Paul never misses a trick and the horse had been entered in a better-class field at a better track despite that blunder in the thought that he might settle better in a classier race. What a wise thought that proved.
The success of Escort’men and of The Nightingale in the novice chase was some consolation to Nicholls’s jockey Ruby Walsh, who had wasted to a coathanger 10.0 stone to ride Fistral Beach in the big race, only to fall at the second. The temptation for a doughnut on the way home must have been huge, but he doesn’t do comfort eating.
Comments