Robert Power watched his first Cheltenham winner from a bar stool. From that, you can deduce a critical element of separation. He ought to have been on Newmill’s back in the 2006 Champion Chase except for three pins in his broken right foot. Jockeys have a gift for microwaving their recoveries but in this case nature wouldn’t be rushed.
He was in the right place for non-prescription tranquillisers. After an evening of self-medication the consoling handshakes continued for a couple of weeks: ‘Sorry for your trouble.’ The irony was that he hadn’t expected Newmill to win. He was bracing himself for Good Thyne Jack, second favourite in the Coral Cup 45 minutes later. That horse ran a stinker. Pulled up. Like Russian Roulette, you never know which chamber is loaded.
It was two years before he got the chance to ride Newmill at the Festival. That day the former champion was a 40-1 outsider beaten by 44 lengths.
You might feel like the game owes you something but there’s no future in that: racing doesn’t recognise creditors. Any settlement of a perceived debt is purely by chance. At Aintree, Power got a break. If Jason Maguire hadn’t been claimed by his retaining yard to ride Idle Talk Power wouldn’t have been offered the mount on Silver Birch in the 2007 Grand National. The horse was a Paul Nicholls cast-off, Gordon Elliot’s first runner in the National, Power’s second ride, a 33-1 chance who had been dogged by injury. He won.
“That day I was thinking, ‘What’s the big fuss about?’”, says Power. “My second ride in the National, I win it. I rode Silver Birch two years later again. He fell at Beechers on the second circuit, going well. A horse that you’d think would be certain to get round. I was lying at the back of Beechers thinking how lucky I was to have won the National.”
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Winning the National is like winning a major in golf: you only need to do it once to be known forever more as a major winner. For Power’s profile, it was the injection he needed. The weigh room is full of good jockeys who never get the chance to express their talent on a really good horse and Power was in that rank. Winning the National didn’t change his life but it altered his reputation.
At first he was known as a showjumper. His father Con was a star of Nations Cup teams in the 1970s and 80s when Irish showjumpers enjoyed mainstream fame; his mother, Margaret, was an international three-day event rider. When he was a boy Power dreamed of being a race rider but rearing and breeding suggested a different path that seemed more grounded in reality.
His talent was obvious. As a junior he took silver at the European Championships and after that he won a bursary to spend a month as a pupil with the rider of his choice. So, he headed for Peter Charles in Hampshire and stayed for four years.
“I was very young when I went over, I was just turned 17. I learned a lot about riding horses but I learned a lot about surviving in life too, standing on my own two feet and being more streetwise. At the end of the month he offered me a job riding all the young horses. When he was gone off abroad to the big shows whatever horses were left at home I was to bring to shows around England.”
Power, though, could see where that path was leading. Without the backing of a couple of wealthy owners he couldn’t strike out on his own and be a player on the world stage, like Charles was. There was a national circuit in Ireland but the prize money was very small and the only way to turn a buck was buying and selling horses. In that vision of the future nothing appealed to him.
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“Halfway through the summer of 2001 I was getting a bit fed up with it. I had a good summer, I qualified seven horses for the Horse of the Year Show at Wembley. I said I’d stay until after Wembley then I was going home. I didn’t know that I was going to go racing. I didn’t know what I was going to do. My mother and father had a mare in training with Jessie [[Harrington] so I said I’d ride her in a few bumpers.”
After that he got a start with Paddy Mullins, the master trainer. This was a scholarship to Harvard. “A very quiet man, never said a lot but very, very shrewd. I was young and you mightn’t know you’d made a mistake. You’d come back in and you’d turn to say something and he’d say, ‘We’ll have a chat in the morning.’ The following morning he’d tell you exactly what you did wrong. I didn’t make the same mistake twice.”
In the summer of 2003 he rode Nearly A Moose to win the Galway Plate for Mullins but that wasn’t his first flagship horse. A few months earlier he had given Intelligent a cool ride to land the Midlands National for Jessica Harrington. Harvey Smith was impressed.
Smith is married to the northern trainer Sue Smith and he knew Power’s dad from their showjumping days. Even though he was still a five-pound claimer, Smith offered Power a job as stable jockey. The only condition was that he couldn’t have an agent. On those terms he declined.
He left Paddy Mullins to join Harrington and that’s where he bedded down. Barry Geraghty had his pick of Harrington’s horses but there was enough in the yard for Power to build a career. By the time Geraghty took the job as Nicky Henderson’s stable jockey Power was ready to step up.
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“Jessie has been a very loyal supporter. She has great confidence in me to ride the horses and it gives great confidence to a jockey when you know you’re being trusted.”
In terms of the winners’ table there have been better seasons in Power’s career but you couldn’t say there has been a better season. In 10 years as a jockey he has won six Grade Ones; four of them have come in a gold rush since the middle of December: two on the steely stayer Boston’s Angel, two on the crack novice hurdler Oscars Well.
Like most of the leading Irish jockeys he is a citizen of the Cheltenham preview circuit. At these events he is asked to evaluate the chances of his marquee rides and he has felt no need to be bashful. “I was second in that race [the RSA Chase] on Horner Woods and this is an awful lot better horse than him. Bostons Angel has a big chance.”
Oscars Well is disputing favouritism for the Neptune Novice’s Hurdle but not at a prohibitive price. Power reckons that if he were trained by Willie Mullins people would be talking about him as the ‘Irish banker’. Harrington’s horses, though, are often underestimated. Listening to Power picking through his rivals his confidence is firm and rational.
“Nicky Henderson’s horse, Bobsworth, there’s still talk he might still go for the three-mile race. The fact that they have the three-mile race in the back of their heads makes me less worried about him.
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“Willie Mullins’ horse So Young looked very impressive and has been talked up a lot but he has beaten absolutely nothing. Rock On Ruby was well held by Bobsworth the last day. But there’s no horse going there as a dual Grade One winner with form as good as our horse has.”
In the Cheltenham schedule, Bostons Angel will run 35 minutes after Oscars Well on Wednesday. The dream is plain to the naked eye.