‘His ashes were in my handbag’: poignant win for Coleman’s widow
When Essex businessman John Coleman, who had always owned cheaper – or “value-for-money horses” as Willie Mullins likes to call them – sold his company a couple of years ago he told the trainer that he finally had what he wanted; the money to buy a horse to take to the Cheltenham Festival.
That horse was Klassical Dream, the 6-1, four-and-a-half length, winner of yesterday’s opening Sky Bet Supreme Novices’ Hurdle but, although John died from bone marrow cancer last summer, he was almost present to witness the victory because his widow Jo was carrying some of his ashes in her handbag.
“It was John’s dream to see him run. He desperately wanted to make this Cheltenham but we brought him – his ashes were in my handbag,” she said. “It seems such a shock to be here to see John’s horse run, let alone win. He bought Klassical Dream two years ago and dreamed he might be a good horse. Now he has proved it. John never got to see the horse run. I didn’t watch the race, I just listened to the boys around me getting more and more excited as it went on.
“John was a Willie Mullins fanatic. I don’t know I can put into words how I feel but it has blown our minds. I’ve brought some of his ashes because he said he wanted to be here but he knew his time was limited and I wanted to make sure he got here.”
For all the talk of a team down on both quantity and quality, Mullins had two winners up before anyone else was on the board, although his luck did not quite last the full length of the afternoon when Benie Des Dieux fell at the last in the OLBG Mares’ Hurdle when clear.
Prior to Klassical Dream, however, Ruby Walsh’s previous ride at
Cheltenham 12 months ago was in an ambulance on his way to hospital to get a broken leg fixed.
But when he hit the front at the top of the hill, his jaw set, in pristine red and yellow hooped colours it was like someone had turned the brightness button on the colour up whilst all his mud-splattered rivals were merely a monochrome background. “There will be tears and beers,” said Mullins, before adding: “And John was very good at that.”
In no time at all Duc Des Genievres, a 5-1 shot, proved to be the only horse both standing and galloping at the end of a dramatic Racing Post Arkle and from the top of the hill Paul Townend was twiddling his thumbs in an effort not to push the button indecently early.
‘John knew his time was limited and I wanted to make sure he got here somehow’
None of his principal market rivals got around. Glen Forsa, hitherto an exemplary jumper, unseated at the fourth, Kalashnikov and Ornua both came down in a scrum at the seventh, while the Kayley Woollacott-trained Lalor was pulled up at halfway having, according to jockey Richard Johnson, “never been at the races”.
“I was moaning at 10 o’clock this morning that the rain hadn’t come,” Mullins said. “The winner of the first is a class act but it worked the oracle for this horse. It made a huge difference. I was wondering what Paul was doing moving out down the hill but he must have seen something we didn’t because he avoided the shemozzle where two horses fell. It feels very good to have had two winners considering what I was thinking three weeks ago.”
Beware The Bear has not been a horse you would pin all your hopes on in the past but a change of tactics worked in the Ultima Handicap Chase to get Nicky Henderson off the mark. Cloudy Dream and Lake View Lad, both owned by Trevor Hemmings, ran good Grand National trials in second and third.
Jamie Codd is, by some margin, the most successful amateur currently riding at the Festival and he rode his eighth winner on Le Breuil in an incident-packed National Hunt Chase in which only four of the 18 starters completed the course.
It must have been music to the ears of local trainer Ben Pauling when Codd rang him for the ride after his original mount, trained by Gordon Elliott, was taken out of the race last week.
Finian Maguire, son of Gold Cup winning jockey Adrian, was taken to Southmead Hospital, Bristol, after a nasty fall from Whisperinthebreeze in the race.