Tizzard banks on final Festival hurrah with The Big Breakaway
The 1973 Grand National, when Red Rum pipped him, is one of the most epic races of all time
Colin Tizzard, who went from dairy farmer to Gold Cup-winning trainer, has nominated The Big Breakaway in the Brown Advisory Novices’ Chase next week as his best chance in his final Cheltenham Festival before he hands over to his son Joe.
Speaking at Wincanton yesterday, he said: “Joe will be on the licence soon. I don’t fancy Colin and Joe [a reference to the fact you can now have joint trainers on a licence]. I’m 65. It won’t change – I’ll still argue with him every morning! He deserves to go on, as you don’t want to go on too late in life.
“He’s doing a good job and it [retirement] was always going to be 65. I’ve got other things I wouldn’t mind doing. I don’t want to wake up every morning worrying about horses all the time. I might want to take the wife away to New Zealand and places like that, which I’ve not been able to do as I’ve been doing the horses the last 25 years.”
As soon as his son completes his training modules, the name Joe Tizzard should be above the door at Venn Farm before the autumn.
The Big Breakaway was fourth in the Ballymore Hurdle last year but has finished second on his past two starts over fences. “He’s a good
Bowing out: Colin Tizzard, Cheltenham Gold Cup winner with Native River in 2018, will hand over to son Joe this year horse,” Tizzard said. “He’s in beautiful form at the moment. With a clear round, he will be there or thereabouts. His first run of the season at Cheltenham – I don’t know what he beat but he walked away from them.
“The second run, we had these ideas to teach him how to be a racehorse and sit in behind, but they went too slow and he sat there and waited. I don’t think he was right then, but he’s right now. Nothing can stay with him on the gallops.”
Tizzard’s 2018 Gold Cup winner, Native River, has had an excellent preparation. “He’s won, been third and fourth in a Gold Cup and second in the NH Chase, so he likes Cheltenham. But he goes through mud like nothing else. He’s 11, but we understand that, he’s had a brilliant prep.”
He added that his other Gold Cup runner, Lostintranslation, third last year, had had a better prep than last year and would enjoy good ground.
Meanwhile, the British Horseracing Authority welcomed comments by Denis Egan, chief executive of its Irish equivalent, clarifying the situation of Denise “Sneezy” Foster being “responsible for everything that takes place [at Cullentra House]” having taken over the licence from trainer Gordon Elliott during his suspension.
There had been questions of Foster being a “flag of convenience” but Egan said: “Denise is responsible for everything that goes on.”
It is an irony of sport and, indeed, soldiery – I am thinking Napoleon and Waterloo here – that occasionally the greats are defined by a defeat rather than their numerous victories.
Never was there a better example in racing than Crisp , the front-running chaser who tanked off in front and whose opposition rarely saw anything other than his backside. He is perhaps best remembered for the 1973 Grand National over 4½ miles in which he, a two-mile specialist, was pipped by Red Rum.
It remains one of the most epic races of all time: Crisp, top weight of 12st on his back, opening a 30-length lead and jumping for fun. Still 15 lengths clear at the last, the petrol gauge now on empty, being hunted down in that 494-yard run-in at Aintree by a horse who would go on to win the National on a further two occasions and to whom he was conceding 23lb in weight.
Forget his third win in 1977; I would say Crisp and that first National – Crisp, in second, was 20 seconds faster than the previous course record – went a long way to teeing up the legend of Red Rum.
Next Wednesday, the Champion Chase will be run at Cheltenham, marking the 50th anniversary of Crisp’s greatest win, when he sauntered to a 15-length triumph without coming off the bridle with Royal Relief a well-beaten third.
Tomorrow will also mark a less memorable 50th anniversary for Crisp’s regular jockey, Richard Pitman. Riding at Sandown, he was coming to the last in front, just one fence away from landing his third winner of the afternoon.
“I’ll be in the Sporting Life tomorrow,” Pitman thought as he approached the fence. “I’ll try and look stylish here for the cameras.”
His mount, feeling the jockey lower his body, became unbalanced, twisted in mid-air and pitched him out of the saddle and, though Pitman landed running, his ankle shattered in seven places, and would be pinned together with a collection of screws and bolts.
A day later, he received a telegram from champion jockey Stan Mellor. Displaying the black humour for which the weighing room is famous, it read: “Get well soon, Richard. At least you’ve got a good screw in you now.”
Pitman had to then watch Crisp, ridden by Paul Kelleway, win the Champion Chase from his hospital bed. “It was pretty galling,” recalls Pitman. “I was pleased for the owner and the horse, but he’d been my ride since he arrived.”
Having cleaned up in his native Australia, where he earned the sobriquet “the Black Kangaroo”, he was sent to Fred Winter in Lambourn and, first time out at Wincanton, carried 12st 7lb to win a handicap chase by 15 lengths.
When he retired, Pitman was invited on a speaking tour of Australia and as guest of honour at Flemington on the day of the Crisp Hurdle. Bidden for lunch in the inner sanctum by the chairman, he was impressed that there were only two paintings on the wall; Archer, the first winner of the Melbourne Cup, and a portrait of Crisp.
At the conclusion of racing, he walked back into the room to thank the chairman and found that the portrait of Crisp had been replaced.
“Wasn’t that great PR, just to have put it up for my visit,” says Pitman. And maybe an allegory for the great horse’s career.