The victory, the biggest in the lives of both trainer and jockey, pushed the epicentre of jump racing just an inch or two further west, confirming the renaissance of racing in Wales already glimpsed by the exploits of the prolific Peter Bowen and Alison Thorpe. Williams is very much cut from the same cloth as Bowen. He is a farmer at heart, but with an instinctive understanding of horses, a rare talent for getting them fit for purpose and a true gift for not caring a jot what other people think either of his facilities, basic but fast improving, or his methods, which are simple but effective.
Any trainer who regards the foot and mouth epidemic of 2001 as the “making” of him commands instant respect, but only recently has the word from Wales been amplified from a whisper to a war cry. Last month, the 35-year-old Williams produced Backstage to win a significant prize at Cheltenham in the well-known colours of Sir Robert Ogden, his first runner for the new owner, and yesterday he brought an old friend, William Rucker, a very English City banker, the
£85,000 first prize in one of the most prestigious handicap chases of the season. People are beginning to notice.
Williams’ philosophy is simple. “We start in the morning, chip away all day and finish at night,” he once explained. But in 2001, in the midst of the foot and mouth outbreak, a more fundamental question had to be answered. “I had no house, no income and a pile of cattle worth nothing,” he said. He also had a wife and three kids, a rambling farmhouse, the odd cowshed, a few horses and no obvious future. But his first two runners as a fully licensed trainer both won and the personable Welshman was on his way.
“It’s not about facilities,” said Williams yesterday, “it’s about training horses. You can have all the facilities in the world, but if you can’t train . . .”
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State Of Play, brought to Williams in the summer of 2005 after an initial spell with Paul Webber, would testify to the confidence now radiating from the yard.
Moloney, another who has taken the hard road through the ranks, was anxious to highlight another quality. Offered a job by Ferdy Murphy in only his second season in England, he decided to stay in the south and broke his leg a month later. “I was nobody again,” said the 27-year-old Irishman. “It was like starting from scratch. So I just concentrated on riding and working for Evan. He believed in me all the way through.”
Moloney, in turn, believed in the young chaser, who ended an eye-catching novice season by beating Lacdoudal a handsome 16 lengths at Aintree and whose only blemish in his record for Williams came at Sandown in the Feltham Novices’ Chase when he finished last of five to Darkness.
The one doubt about State Of Play, not one to be voiced within speaking distance of the trainer, was his swift rise up the handicap. As his price of 10-1 suggested, 11st 4lb seemed plenty enough weight for the six-year-old to be lugging round three miles and two and a half furlongs of a bottomless Newbury racetrack. But it was clear from at least four fences out, as Moloney quietly hugged the rail and conserved every last ounce of energy for the long run home, that State Of Play was about to justify the enormous confidence placed in him by his connections, if not the punters.
Vodka Bleu loomed on the outside with Timmy Murphy, Preacher Boy had run his gallant race and Juveigneur was creeping closer.
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Moloney could wait no longer and asked his mount for a decisive leap three from home. “He’s not a big jumper, but he’s a great athlete,” he said later. State Of Play answered the call and, though Juveigneur battled hard to peg back the leader after the last, there was still a four-length gap at the line. “The one thing about this horse is that he stays,” added Moloney.
The quirky Turpin Green, the second-favourite, was pulled up after a circuit, though Tony Dobbin had enjoyed better fortune on Inglis Drever, the former staying hurdle champion, earlier in the Long Distance Hurdle.
In the Fighting Fifth at Newcastle, Straw Bear earned a 7-1 quote from Ladbrokes for the Champion Hurdle with an impressive victory for Nick Gifford and Tony McCoy.