Even on a day when many at Cheltenham will believe they saw a future Gold Cup winner and everyone present will feel privileged to witness valedictory Festival success for AP McCoy, there was something memorably uplifting about the Ladbrokes World Hurdle victory of Cole Harden.
This blessed place brings out the rawest of emotions and is all the more compelling for it. Warren Greatrex may cringe when he looks back on the tears, the wild dance and the on-air expletives that followed his breakthrough winner, but it stands as graphic evidence of the consuming tensions within the Festival on which everyone is judged.
McCoy has been winning Cheltenham races for 19 years and the knowledge that Uxizandre may be his last lent poignancy to his grateful features after the Ryanair Chase. Greatrex, though, has only just begun as a trainer and both he and his young jockey Gavin Sheehan were breaking their Festival ducks in unforgettable style.
Once calm enough to regain the power of speech, Greatrex reflected that his first racing employer, David Nicholson, would have been unimpressed by his celebrations. “ ‘The Duke’ would have kicked me for it,” he said. “I’ve always been told to stay really cool but you just can’t know what this feels like.”
Cole Harden, plainly transformed by a breathing operation and a return to the ground on which he won a grade two at Wetherby in the autumn, made every yard of the running — a notable feature of all three grade one races — and stormed up the hill to win by more than three lengths.
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Saphir Du Rheu, sent off favourite in the colours that once dominated this race aboard Big Buck’s, was second but the luckless horse was his stablemate, Zarkandar, still travelling powerfully when almost coming down at the second-last. In the circumstances, he did well to rally into third.
Yet in a race lacking two of its headline acts, More Of That and Rock On Ruby, Cole Harden was a spectacular advertisement for Greatrex. He also restored the long-forgotten glory days to the Uplands yard in Lambourn, from where Fred Winter sent out so many Festival winners.
Greatrex, 40, said: “I always believed in this horse but I was struggling with his wind. He won at Wetherby, so we left him alone, but I knew he wasn’t right after he ran in the Cleeve here in January, so he had soft-palate surgery straight afterwards. He’s the real deal, but you just don’t believe you are going to win a race like this.”
The same might apply to connections of Uxizandre, sent off two points bigger than Cole Harden at 16-1, but at least McCoy and J P McManus are accustomed to such days. For Alan King, the trainer, it was rich compensation for his better-fancied runner, Balder Succes, losing his chance with a blunder at the second fence.
By then, Uxizandre was enjoying the uncontested lead he loves, McCoy producing a series of precise jumps that seemed beyond him during his mid-season loss of form. It had been too easy to forget his previous Cheltenham visit in November, when the champion two-miler Dodging Bullets was among his victims.
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Nothing got close to the winner, Ma Filleule and Don Cossack following him home at respectful margins, and King said: “He lost his way on the soft ground in the winter. The visor has helped him and A P gave him a wonderful ride. We’ll never see his like again and it makes it extra special to give him a winner here.”
A jostling guard of honour formed through the paddock as McCoy returned, turning briefly to smile at the words “We’ll miss you A P” on the giant screen. Doubtless, he will return in some guise next year and few would be surprised if he saw Vautour win the Gold Cup, after a stunning display in the JLT Novices’ Chase.
Few novices can have jumped this course better and Willie Mullins, his trainer, was visibly moved. “This is a machine and he could go over any trip,” he said. “But we’ll go the Gold Cup route, I’d say.” Ladbrokes reacted by making him 4-1 favourite, even before this year’s race has taken place.
Big-race details
3.20 Ladbrokes World Hurdle
1 Cole Harden (G Sheehan) 14-1
2 Saphir Du Rheu (S Twiston-Davies) 5-1 fav
3 Zarkandar (N Fehily) 6-1
16 ran. NR: Dedigout.
Dist: 3 1/4l, 3 1/4l.
Trainer: W Greatrex