Robin Oakley

Double tragedy

issue 24 November 2007

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.

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