It was as if we’d never been away for the Flat season. On Paddy Power Gold Cup day at Cheltenham Tony McCoy, implacable in his concentration, pale-faced as a cadaver, wearing about him an aura of resolution the way others trail clouds of aftershave, rode the first two winners. As if to remind us what we’d been missing, the double took him to his century for a season which only now starts to get full media attention.
Foolishly I suggested to a couple of jumping friends that for once the National Hunt scene would be hard put to it to compete with the drama and excitement provided by the duel between Seb Sanders and Jamie Spencer for the Flat jockeys championship, a duel of constantly swinging fortunes which went to the very last race of the season and ended serendipitously in a dead heat.
On a day of pain, passion and heartbreak I was proved wrong within hours. That morning champion trainer Paul Nicholls, brimming with confidence and open as ever, had declared in his Racing Post column that he had never had a horse so well handicapped as Granit Jack, the short-priced favourite for the Paddy Power, who was to be ridden by the stable’s No. 1 jockey Ruby Walsh. Earlier, Ruby was also partnering Willyanwoody, one of the yard’s most exciting novice chasers.
At 1.30 tragedy struck for the first time. At the downhill fence the cruising Willyanwoody fell, breaking his neck and dying instantly. Ruby Walsh took a fearful battering, among other injuries dislocating his shoulder. Amid the grief, the practicalities. Nicholls and Granit Jack’s owner John Hales had to scramble to find a jockey who could do the minimum ten stone allotted to Granit Jack.
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