Don’t spend your life looking back
Harrington and Power axis keeps on going
ON day two of the 2011 Cheltenham Festival, Robbie Power slipped out the back of the jockeys’ room for a quick pull on a fag and a slug of a soft drink.
He only had a few moments between races to gather his thoughts and couldn’t afford to dwell on what might have been in the Neptune Hurdle if Oscars Well hadn’t botched the last flight.
He had his next job to do for Jessica Harrington, on Boston’s Angel in the RSA Chase.
Any inquest could wait. The ciggy was extinguished, cheeks were puffed, and a clear-headed Power returned to the combat zone in the Cotswolds.
About 15 minutes later, he returned to the unsaddling enclosure as a first-time winner at Cheltenham. At 29, he’d broken through at the Festival and the occasion became a benchmark for a lift-off in a career best known until then by his 2007 Grand National success on Silver Birch.
Power would finish with 20 winners on home turf in 2010/11 and has improved every season since, reaching a high of 45 in 2016/17.
He’s also added three more Cheltenham Festival winners, including the Gold Cup, and has a coveted Irish Grand National on his CV — all for Harrington.
Now in his mid-30s, Power is riding better than ever and has a book of rides at the Festival, which includes horses owned by the late Ann and Alan Potts, trained by Colin Tizzard in Somerset, that is the envy of almost every colleague, bar Ruby Walsh.
As rooks made a raucous racket in Harrington’s well-ordered Kildare yard, Power reflected how far he has journeyed during his alliance with the sprightly septuagenarian of jump racing.
‘I’ve been 17 years coming in and out of here,’ he said. ‘It’s a fantastic place and I’ve been very lucky to be associated with one of the top stables in Ireland. There’s 150 horses here now, between Flat and National Hunt.
‘It’s grown and Jessie’s daughters, Kate and Emma, play a huge part in it. It’s a big team effort, Eamonn Leigh has been here since before Jessie, and it’s a very well-run professional outfit.’
And Power is under no illusions as to who is the boss.
‘No doubt about that for one second Jessie calls the shots.’
That was evident at the recent Boylesports Irish Grand National launch where an amalgam of Fairyhouse folk, press and owners inadvertently walked along a wrong path in the yard.
‘Get back up on the bank, all of you,’ barked Harrington from half a furlong away.
Yet beneath the tough exterior, Harrington’s no-nonsense style is suited in a sport where emotions often need to be stabled elsewhere. For example, that day at Cheltenham in 2011 when Power and Oscars Well almost parted company at the last when leading — they finished fourth — there was no anger towards Power in the Harrington post-mortem.
‘I said to Robert, and this is the only thing you can say, “it’s history now, it’s done. Focus on the next thing”,’ said Harrington. ‘If you spend your whole life looking back you’ll be miserable.’
Harrington insists on calling her stable jockey Robert, not Robbie. It sounds slightly askew, a bit like the way Jack Charlton was the only person in football who ever called Ray Houghton ‘Raymond’. Not that Power minds. ‘My mother and my father always called me Robert. Jessie has known me since I was in nappies and she has always known me as Robert,’ he explained.
The Mrs John Harrington-RM Power axis is one of the longest trainer-jockey alliances in Irish racing, comparable to Jim Bolger and Kevin Manning on the Flat.
And as both advance towards the autumn of their careers, there is no sign of slacking. If anything, they are pushing harder, for there are immense rewards at stake.
At Cheltenham, for example, Harrington will likely saddle the favourite for the Stayers’ Hurdle, Supasundae, and has Our Duke in the Gold Cup. Should Supasundae win, Harrington would become only the third trainer, and first from Ireland, to complete a grand slam of Festival majors, following Moscow Flyer (Champion Chase), Jezki (Champion Hurdle) and Sizing John (Gold Cup).
In Power, she has a jockey she trusts from tip to toe, for Power is riding better than ever, even if Harrington puts it down to the horseflesh underneath.
‘Good horses make good jockeys. As soon as they ride good horses everyone says how well they’re riding but they were probably riding s**t horses just as well, it’s just that nobody notices.’
Power knows Harrington has a point, but he reckons the confidence factor can’t be underestimated in a jockey’s world. He rode three Cheltenham winners last year and, by the end of the Festival, was on such a high he’d have probably found some way to boot a mule first past the post.
‘Confidence is crucial in every sport. If you keep hitting it wide, you’ll lose confidence,’ he said. ‘Same as a jockey. If you keep finishing second or third, you start to doubt yourself.’
Seven years ago, Power didn’t doubt himself at Cheltenham. He won’t start doing so now either.