The most colourful sight at Sandown on the Saturday before the Cheltenham Festival was not the jockeys’ silks but the vivid bruising around Ruby Walsh’s eye as he returned on his first winner since breaking his leg in November. The blues, reds and yellows visible on his stitched-up face were the result of a fall on King of the Refs at Naas three days before. Had he feared the worst as his mount had gone down? Oh, no, said Ruby matter-of-factly, in a jump jockey’s life there is all the difference in the world between ordinary nuisance pain and ‘oh, my God, I’ve broken it’ pain.
We’ll have had plenty of glory at Cheltenham by the time you read this — producing words before the four-day extravaganza that won’t be read until after it isn’t the racing scribe’s easiest task — but sometimes we should remember the privations these gladiators endure to give us our thrills.
Not far away at Sandown on Saturday was Brendan Powell. When he quit the saddle more or less in one piece to take up training, I remember, he declared, ‘I’ve been pretty lucky with injuries.’ His idea of ‘pretty lucky’ was that he had had only two broken legs, a broken arm, both collarbones shattered in repeated fractures and a ruptured stomach causing massive internal bleeding. Those who’ve had success at Cheltenham this week deserve their applause.
As well as the cheers for Ruby’s resumption of the winning trail there was an especially warm reception for Dominic Elsworth’s victory in the big race, the Imperial Cup, on Lucy Wadham’s Alarazi. Dominic has had to work his way back again after being 14 months out of the saddle with head injuries sustained at Ffos Las which at one stage threatened to leave him unable to drive again, let alone to handle hefty chasers and nifty hurdlers over obstacles at speed.
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