This was for the whole yard, insists Jessica
Harrington now the best female trainer of all time at Cheltenham
AMID the flow of Gold Cup congratulations, there was one text which tickled Jessica Harrington’s fancy. ‘It said, “Life begins at 70”. ‘I particularly liked that one,’ she chuckled.
At an age when most folk have retired, Harrington was on call bright and early yesterday at her stables in Moone, County Kildare, as her ‘three heroes’, Sizing John, Rock The World and Supasundae, arrived back safely from Cheltenham.
‘They all seem none the worse for it all,’ she said.
Neither was Harrington, who was coming to grips with the enormity of her achievement at becoming only the third woman after Jenny Pitman and Henrietta Knight to train the winner of the Gold Cup.
‘It’s sinking in now. We’ve watched the re-run several times and enjoyed reliving the moment. It’s a lovely feeling. Robbie [Power] gave him (Sizing John) a lovely ride.’
Harrington sent a team of eight horses to Cheltenham, seven of which ran and she saddled three winners.
She might have had a fourth with Someday in the Bumper on Wednesday but the Cheltenham vets deemed he wasn’t sound enough to run, which irked Harrington who would never have declared a horse if she wasn’t satisfied with its welfare.
‘I was annoyed at the time but once the decision was made I couldn’t do anything about it. You move on.’
The three wins made her the most successful lady trainer in Cheltenham Festival history, overtaking Pitman.
She has also achieved something that no Irish trainer has ever done by saddling the winners of the Champion Chase (Moscow Flyer), Champion Hurdle (Jezki) and now Gold Cup.
Success with Sizing John on Friday eclipsed the 12-race haul of Gordon Elliott and Willie Mullins who carved up the meeting between them.
Elliott sent out five of his six winners in the first two days, while Mullins arrived with a wet sail to saddle six on Thursday and Friday.
The trainer’s title was decided by second places and Elliott won it for the first time, by a fraction as Mega Fortune touched off Baupaume in the Triumph Hurdle behind Defi Du Seuil.
Both had runners in the Gold Cup but Elliott’s Outlander never landed a blow while Djakadam seems destined to miss out after fading in the final furlong.
The gutsy eight-year-old has now been second twice and a narrow fourth, beaten less than 10 lengths in all. He deserves a Gold Cup but Sizing John, only seven, could be here to stay.
In modern times, the only multiple Gold Cup winners, Arkle (three wins), L’Escargot (two), Best Mate (three) and Kauto Star (two), all won the race for the first time at seven.
For Harrington, the presence of Sizing John poking his head above the stable door each morning is incentive to keep her small, but perfectly-formed show, on the road.
‘We’ve a great team here. Eamonn Leigh was here before me; Robbie [Power] contributes on so many levels, as do my daughters Emma and Kate. Any win we have is for the whole yard,’ she said.
It’s a far cry from when she took out a trainer’s licence in 1989. ‘I had just six horses then,’ she recalled.
That she worked her way up from the rear of the field to become a front runner in the sport, reflects her competitive upbringing (she was selected for the Olympics in 1980 and ’84 on the Irish Three-Day Event team).
She is also possessed of a steely will, and a refusal to accept defeat when the odds are against you. Her late father, Brigadier Bryan ‘Frizz’ Fowler who fought
in two World Wars and won a silver medal for polo at the 1936 Olympics would, you suspect, have admired his daughter’s fortitude.
‘I was asked last year what I thought about Willie [Mullins] winning everything left, right and centre. And I said there was no point in moping around feeling sorry for yourself, that you had to raise the bar yourself. Which we did.’ Harrington made the Festival breakthrough with Space Trucker in ‘the last race of the last millennium at Cheltenham’ and returned to the winner’s enclosure in 2002, 2003, 2005, 2007, 2011 and 2014 before hitting a treble top last week. ‘They were all special as it’s the hardest place to train a winner as everyone is so competitive.’ Harrington also thought of her late second husband, Johnny, who passed away a month after Jezki’s 2014 Champion Hurdle triumph.
‘Johnny would have loved to be part of all this. We would have been married 40 years this year,’ she said.
So what’s the plan for now? ‘We’re about to give everyone a drink,’ she said.