JOHN IS JEWEL IN JESSIE’S CROWN
Harrington thrilled to bag ‘gold medal in the Olympics’ And reveals original target for Sizing was not Gold Cup
THE first lady of the Cheltenham Festival leaned on a plastic barrier in the parade ring, a few feet from where Jessica Harrington was being engulfed in a scrum of well-wishers.
‘Women on top. That’s just the way we like it,’ grinned Jenny Pitman, as impish as ever.
Now an author, Pitman, sent out the first of her two Gold Cup winners in 1984, the year Harrington was selected to represent Ireland in the Olympic Games.
The Olympic theme duly cropped up when Harrington sipped a flute of bubbly and grappled with the enormity of saddling Sizing John to win the Gold Cup.
‘This is our Olympics and I’ve got the gold medal,’ she said, clearly dazed. ‘It’s the jewel in the crown and I’m sitting here thinking “this hasn’t happened.”
It wouldn’t have happened at all had Robbie Power, the winning jockey, not suggested to Harrington that Sizing John might be better off running at longer distances this season instead of being pummelled by Douvan.
The step up in trip didn’t trouble the seven-year-old and Harrington’s Cheltenham target was the Ryanair Chase but Alan Potts, the bluff Yorkshire owner with pockets as deep as the Sizing mining machine he patented, felt otherwise.
‘Alan wanted to go for the Gold Cup. He’s the owner, I’m the trainer, and he was right,’ said Harrington, who has now won the Champion Chase (Moscow Flyer), Champion Hurdle (Jezki) and the Gold Cup.
For all her achievements, Harrington, had never entered a horse in the Gold Cup before — ‘we didn’t have anything good enough’ — and she described her win yesterday as ‘beginner’s luck.’
That’s not quite true as the Kildare trainer knows her business and when she inherited Sizing John from Henry de Bromhead’s strike. yard last August, she had a Grade One diamond on her hands.
Sizing John jumped into the Gold Cup equation when he claimed the Irish Gold Cup at Leopardstown last month and yesterday he followed Imperial Call (1996) as the first winner of both races.
Ahead of the final day’s racing, grey clouds scudded in from the north, bringing with it a chill wind as Cheltenham’s mood became dark and menacing. For the high-heeled day-trippers, mostly from London, the lack of extra layers was an oversight and many stayed huddled inside the bars for warmth. For the National Hunt die-hards, this was proper mid-winter jumping weather and by the time the 13 runners were called to the tape for the Gold Cup, the props appeared to in place for Willie Mullins, not Harrington, to By then, Mullins had notched up two winners on the card through Arctic Fire (20/1) in the County Hurdle and Penhill (16/1) in the Albert Bartlett Hurdle. He had turned his Festival around and punters plunged on Djakadam fearlessly — by the off, he was the 3/1 favourite. For almost three miles, Djakadam looked set fair to give Mullins his first Gold Cup success as Ruby Walsh tracked Richard Johnson on River City, sitting as still as a church mouse.
Turning for home, River City refused to wilt while Power and Sizing John appeared at the head of the posse.
At the second last, Djakadam wasn’t perfect and as Sizing John surged upsides, the punters holding dockets for the runner-up of the last two years, became fretful.
There was one fence left to manoeuvre, and the punishing climb to the post for Sizing John, a horse now in uncharted territory.
It was here that Power’s conviction his charge would stay the distance was tested. At the last, Sizing John ‘pinged it’ and then found more.
Power said ‘the hill seemed to go on forever,’ but the seven-year-old repelled his pursuers like a true champion.
At the line, he had two and three quarter-lengths to spare over the fast-finishing Minella Rocco, who edged out River City and the luckless Djakadam.
‘He was a little unlucky with the jump at the second last and might have made a better placing but we can’t complain. It didn’t cost him the race,’ said Mullins.
‘We’ve had a fantastic festival. I’m feeling a lot better now than I was on Wednesday evening.’
Of the others, Cue Card again fell at the third last when beaten, but Paddy Brennan fared better than Lizzie Kelly on Tea For Two, who was ejected in front of the grandstands on the first circuit.
If Harrington, 70, was chuffed at the outcome, she was wary when a post-race comparison to Kauto Star, also a Gold Cup winner at seven, was raised.
‘He’s only seven and we’ll try and come back and defend our crown,’ she said. ‘It won’t be easy as we’ve seen from the last two winners that this race takes a lot out of horses.’
Power, known in the game as ‘Puppy’, has been around long enough to appreciate the good days.
‘I was 25 when I won the Grand National and I thought then I’d win everything. I’m 35 now and know that I won’t,’ he quipped.
Son of Con Power, the Irish show-jumper, Power got a huge kick out of the presentation. ‘When they called me out as a Gold-Cup-winning jockey, it was the nicest thing I ever heard,’ he said.
Floating on air, ‘Puppy’ rode the last race as if inspired, threading a route through for Rock The World in the speedy two-miler to sign off with a Festival treble.
After their success with Supasundae on Wednesday, this was a Super Friday for Harrington and Power.
‘Alan wanted to go for the Gold Cup, he was right’