Category: Questions

Harry Whittington, who is based at Hill Barn Stables in Sparsholt Firs, near Wantage, Oxfordshire, overlooking Lambourn, first took out a training licence in 2012. He enjoyed his most successful season, numerically and fiscally, in 2019/20, when he trained 30 winners from 160 runners, at a strike rate of 19%, and amassed over £450,000 in prize money. His biggest payday that season came on March 12, 2020, at the Cheltenham Festival, when Simply The Betts, ridden by Gavin Sheehan, justified favouritism in the Grade 3 Brown Advisory & Merriebelle Stable Plate, worth nearly £62,000 to winning connections.

By that stage of his career, Whittington had long since saddled his one and only Grade 1 winner, Arzal, in the Manifesto Novices’ Chase at Aintree on April 7, 2016. Tragically, Arzal was put down shortly afterwards due to complications arising from a minor leg injury, but the form was franked by the second and third horses, L’Ami Serge and Sizing John, who won the Grande Course de Haies d’Auteuil and the Cheltenham Gold Cup the following year!

In March, 2023, Whittington announced that he would be reliquishing his training licence at the end of the 2022/23 National Hunt season, in favour of a return breaking-in and pre-training young horses, something he had done successfully for the likes of Nicky Henderson and Tom Dascombe before turning his hand to training. He told the Racing Post, ‘I have always loved pre-training horses. It’s something I get a real kick out of, and it was something we have always considered doing again.’ Whittington duly saddled his final runner, Docpickedme, who was pulled up, in a handicap hurdle at Warwick on April 27, 2023. All told, he trained over 180 winners, including a handful on the Flat, which was a fair return for someone who once told ‘Trainer’ magazine, ‘I actually had no aspirations to be a trainer whatsoever.’

For readers unfamiliar with the name, Sprinter Sacre was the outstanding two-mile steeplechaser of his generation who, between February, 2010 and April, 2016, won 18 of his 24 races and earned in excess of £1.1 in prize money. Owned by Caroline Mould and trained by Nicky Henderson at Seven Barrows in Upper Lambourn, Berkshire, the Network gelding was sent over fences in December, 2011 and duly embarked on a winning streak of 10 races, the last seven of which were all at the highest, Grade 1 level and included the Arkle Challenge Trophy and the Queen Mother Champion Chase at the Cheltenham Festival.

Indeed, his performance in the latter race in 2013, when he started at odds of 1/4, was never off the bridle and sauntered clear in the closing stages to beat the 2011 winner, Sizing Europe, was described by Timeform as ‘one of the greatest in the history of National Hunt racing’. At that stage, he was awarded a Timeform rating of 192p – the ‘p’ indicating he was ‘ likely to make more than normal progress and to improve on his rating’ – which remains the third highest awarded to a steeplechaser, behind only Arkle and Flyingbolt.

On his reappearance at Kempton Park in December, 2013, Sprinter Sacre was pulled up and subsequently diagnosed with an irregular heartbeat, from which he recovered, but nonetheless did not race again until January, 2015. On his return, he was beaten, at odds-on, by Dodging Bullets, trained by Paul Nicholls, in the Clarence House Chase at Ascot and pulled up, when favourite, behind the same horse in in the Queen Mother Champion Chase two months later.

The last horse to beat Sprinter Sacre, though, was Special Tiara, trained by Henry De Bromhead, who did so in the Celebration Chase at Sandown Park in April, 2015. Although never quite the force of old, Sprinter Sacre returned to something approaching his best in 2015/16, winning all four starts, including a second Queen Mother Champion Chase, before suffering a tendon injury and being retired in November, 2016.

Nowadays, Michael Anthony ‘Mick’ Fitzgerald is best known as a television presenter, most recently with ITV Racing. However, until forced into retirement in August, 2008, aged 38, Fitzgerald was one of the most successful National Hunt jockeys of all time. All told, he rode a total of 1,310 winners in Britain and Ireland, all bar 15 of which came on British soil, but his riding career was effectively brought to an end when he smashed four vertebrae in his neck during a second-fence fall from L’Ami in the Grand National on April 5, 2008. He recovered sufficiently to return to the saddle but, faced with the threat of paralysis in the event of another fall, he took medical advice and hung up his boots.

Fitzgerald rode his first winner, Lover’s Secret, trained by Richard Tucker, in a conditional jockeys’ selling hurdle at Ludlow on December 20, 1988. In the early nineties, he became stable jockey to Nicky Henderson at Seven Barrows in Lambourn, Berkshire, where he would spend the remainder of his riding career. As far as the Cheltenham Festival is concerned, Fitzgerald rode a total of 14 winners at the March showpiece, the first of which was Ramylette, trained by Henderson, in the now-defunct Cathcart Challenge Cup in 1994.

In 1996, Fizgerald won the Grand National on Rough Quest, trained by Terry Casey and, in 1999, the Cheltenham Gold Cup on See More Business, trained by Paul Nicholls. Rather ironically, though, granted that Nicky Henderson has since become the most successful trainer in the history of the Champion Hurdle, the two-mile hurdling championship was the one major race to elude his long-serving stable jockey. Henderson has saddled See You Then (1985, 1986 and 1987) and, since Fitzgerald retired, Punjabi (2009), Binocular (2010), Buveur D’Air (2017 and 2018), Epatante (2020) and Constitution Hill (2023).

For aficianados of National Hunt racing, the Cheltenham Gold Cup represents the pinnacle of the sport and for any owner, jockey or trainer, winning the ‘Blue Riband’ event is a dream come true. However, in just over a century since the Cheltenham Gold Cup was established, as a steeplechase, in 1924, a select few men have managed to win the race as a jockey and as a trainer.

Fred Winter, for example, won back-to-back renewals of the Cheltenham Gold Cup on Saffron Tartan and Mandarin in 1961 and 1962 and, following his retirement from the saddle in 1964, later saddled Midnight Court, ridden by John Francome, to victory in 1978. Likewise, Pat Taaffe won the Cheltenham Gold Cup as a jockey, three times on the incomparable Arkle, in 1964, 1965 and 1996 and again on stable companion Fort Leney in 1968, also won as a trainer with Captain Christy in 1974.

The last person to achieve the notable double, though, was Killarney-born James ‘Jim’ Culloty who, as a jockey, completed in a hat-trick in the Cheltenham Gold Cup on Best Mate, trained by Henrietta Knight, in 2002, 2003 and 2004. Having retired from the saddle in 2005, he subsequently trained Lord Windermere, ridden by Davy Russell, to win a dramatic renewal in 2014. In so doing, he became just the fourth man, after Danny Morgan (who achieved the feat back in 1959), Winter and Taaffe to ride and train a Cheltenham Gold Cup winner.

The Cheltenham Festival is, of course, the flagship week in British National Hunt racing and, since 2005, has been a four-day extravanganza, nowadays featuring 28 quintessential races across every discipline of the sport. Half of those races are Grade 1 races, in which horses compete off level weights, subject to allowances for age and gender, but at least one of the so-called ‘feature’ races forms the highlight of each day.

Traditionally, the four feature races are the Champion Hurdle, Queen Mother Champion Chase, Stayers’ Hurdle and Cheltenham Gold Cup, but it would be fair to say that the Festival Trophy, or Ryanair Chase, which was introduced in 2005 and promoted to Grade 1 status in 2008, now rivals the Stayers’ Hurdle for top billing on the third day of the Cheltenham Festival.

The oldest, most valuable and, by far, most prestigious of the quintet is the Cheltenham Gold Cup, run over three miles and two and a half furlongs on the New Course on the final day. Nowadays worth £625,000 in prize money, the race has been won by some of the finest steeplechasers in history. Second billing goes to the two-mile hurdling championship, the Champion Hurdle, which was established just three years after the Cheltenham Gold Cup, in 1927, and is run on the Old Course on the opening day. Arguably slightly further down the pecking order come the two-mile chasing championship, the Queen Mother Champion Chase, the three-mile hurdling championship, the Stayers’ Hurdle, and the aforementioned Ryanair Chase, which is run over the ‘intermediate’ distance of two miles and four and a half furlongs.