JAMIE MOORE: I AM GUTTED, I LET EVERYONE DOWN
Moore rattled by Triumph misery
JAMIE MOORE said he was still ‘distraught’ yesterday after the cruel episode in which he was unseated from Goshen with the Triumph Hurdle in the bag on the last day of the Cheltenham Festival.
The 5-2 favourite, trained by Moore’s father, Gary, was 10 lengths clear and going easily when making a jolting mistake that unbalanced his rider.
Goshen’s exit handed victory to the Willie Mullins-trained Burning Victory. Replays also showed Goshen’s rear-hind hoof landing on top of his near-fore hoof. It was another momentum-effecting incident and one that could have caused the horse serious injury.
Moore said: ‘I am so pleased he did not strike into himself and seriously injure himself but, at the same time, I am gutted that I let everyone down.
‘My dad thinks the world of the horse. He mucks him out at half five every morning. I have let him down, the owners down and everyone at the yard down. That is what is killing me more than anything because they all think so much of Goshen. There’s also everyone who backed him.
‘I looked at the big screen and thought Harry (Skelton on thirdplaced Allmankind) was closer to me than he was so I have kept the revs up.
‘I didn’t think it was a drastically long stride but perhaps it was too long. I sat the first bit and thought, “I have got this”.
‘It was when he propped when he got his feet caught up and all of a sudden I have gone again. He’s fast and was trapping.’
Moore is one of the weighing room’s most popular jockeys. His one previous Cheltenham Festival win came on his father’s Sire De Grugy in the 2014 Queen Mother Champion Chase.
Moore, who rode at Fontwell yesterday, added: ‘It cut me in two. I’ve had just one Cheltenham Festival winner, so I know how few and far between they are.
‘Goshen had obliterated them. I never thought I would get a horse as good as Sire De Grugy, but I galloped Goshen a couple of weeks ago and thought he was better than Sire.
‘He was going to prove that. He was still quickening. He wasn’t just going to jump the last and fold. He was going further clear.’
Among those to comfort Moore in the immediate aftermath of the race was 20-time champion jockey Anthony McCoy, and Moore said he had been inundated with messages of support.
Meanwhile Castlegrace Paddy ended a 15-month barren spell with victory in the Grade Two Webster Cup Chase at Navan.
The nine-year-old has been highly tried by Pat Fahy after winning the Hilly Way Chase back in December 2018, finishing a distant third in last year’s Champion Chase at Punchestown and then fourth behind Chacun Pour Soi on his return this term in the Dublin Chase.