‘Moody old devil gave me a day of a lifetime DAWN RUN
IN 1986, Dawn Run became the first horse to win both the Champion Hurdle and the Cheltenham Gold Cup. She remains the only one.
“She was some mare to win over two miles and three miles, two,” reflects Jonjo O’Neill, the man on board the Paddy Mullins-tutored mare for both victories. “A machine.”
Speed and stamina for the two races are seldom found in the same horse, who must also master the different techniques needed for jumping hurdles and fences.
The first leg of the double, in 1984, came as a surprise to O’Neill.
“I rode her at Ascot (in November 1983),” he recalls. “We beat Amarach and Jimmy Duggan a short head.
“I came back in and said, ‘Paddy, she’s no Champion Hurdle mare.’
“But Paddy knew what they had, and she won the Champion Hurdle.”
By order of Dawn Run’s owner, Charmian Hill, O’Neill had replaced Mullins’ son Tony, who partnered the mare to 15 of her 21 career wins, in the Champion Hurdle.
Hill paid the piper, and she re-asserted her right to call the tune after the young Mullins’ calamitous discharge from the saddle five from home in Dawn Run’s Gold Cup trial, the Cotswold Chase at Cheltenham in January 1986.
O’Neill had yet to ride the eight-year-old over fences – she had raced just four times over larger obstacles – so arrangements were made for a schooling drill at Gowran Park.
“She wasn’t good,” winces O’Neill. “Novicey. I said, ‘I think we need to school her again.’
“So we schooled her at Punchestown and Tony rode another horse with me.
“I’m thinking, ‘She’s a Champion Hurdler – I can drop this one in last in the Gold Cup’.
“So I dropped her in – there was only Tony and me – but I just could not get her to go.
“I thought, ‘There’s only one way to ride her, and that’s up front, because when she’s in behind the moody old devil doesn’t want to know!’”
O’Neill had no choice but to lead in the Gold Cup – whoever else had the same plan. “We went like the clappers to the first,” recounts O’Neill. “We were in front, but they kept aggravating us and Run
AWINNER at Cheltenham, Jonjo O’Neill says, is ‘like trying to get into heaven’.
The 68-yearold’s love of the home of jump racing began with Peterhof’s Triumph Hurdle win of 1976, and endures to the present day.
“It’s unique,” says O’Neill,
And Skip took us on.” The two horses traded blows throughout before Dawn Run, the 15-8 favourite, dropped her hind feet into the water jump nine out, showering those in pursuit.
“Run And Skip took it up and I knew I had to get her past him again as quickly as I could, because she’d sulk. He missed the next one and I winged it. I got back up the inside again.”
Ragged jumps at the fifth and fourth fences from home triggered her jockey’s whip hand as reigning champion Forgive’n Forget and three-time King George VI Chase hero Wayward Lad appeared with menace.
“I thought, ‘We’ve gone some gallop, we’ll never get home.’ At the second-last, I could hear them coming. She winged the second-last, but Wayward Lad and Forgive’n Forget went past me as if I was standing still. I thought, ‘Well, I’m beaten now’.”
The next 20 seconds saw one of sport’s greatest comebacks.
As Forgive’n who has enjoyed career highs as both trainer and jockey at the National Hunt Festival. “It’s a magical place where everybody wants to be.” O’Neill even chose Cheltenham as the place to marry wife Jacqui in January 1997.
“It was lucky for me, so I thought I would try it,” he says. “See if the luck holds up!” Here, he recounts his favourite memories to DAVID YATES
Forget failed for courage, and Wayward Lad for stamina, the unflinching Dawn Run surged back to the front for a one-length triumph.
“I sat on her and gave her a chance to get her breath. She just filled up.
“Wayward Lad was brilliant in Kempton, but he didn’t get the three miles, two in the Gold Cup. Forgive’n Forget had given up, but she kept galloping all the way up the hill.”
Cue mayhem. The Cheltenham hordes had witnessed history in the making, and they wanted something to remember the occasion.
“There wasn’t a lot of security around and when she was coming back into the winners’ enclosure people were pulling hairs out of her tail and grabbing everything.
“I had a job to keep hold of everything I had – everybody was looking for a souvenir – and I was trying to weigh in.”
The once impossible has been rendered routine in sport’s changing landscape, but O’Neill believes Dawn Run’s feat will remain unique.
“If you asked a bookmaker to give you a price about the 2021 Champion Hurdler for the 2023 Gold Cup, he’d take your temperature,” he laughs.
“It was a day in a lifetime. You dream about things like that when you’re a kid, and it all came true on the day. A day you’ll never forget.” Jackdaws Castle stables are sponsored by
the Wasdell Group.