King of the sprint

After last Saturday’s Stewards’ Cup, trainer Dandy Nicholls was bouncing around the unsaddling enclosure like one of those rubber balls one always coveted as a child: small and perfectly formed but hard and indestructible, too. He carries several stones more than he did when he won the most competitive sprint of them all as a jockey on Soba in 1982, but not an ounce of it is soft.

Nicholls is a tough Yorkshireman who turns out tough horses, but for a while after the last-stride victory of Gift Horse we saw the softer side of a man in a state of what one can only call dazed elation. For a minute or two he clearly thought he was Frankie Dettori, kissing everyone in sight, from the horse to the owners to BBC Radio’s distinguished Cornelius Lysaght, who received a smacker in mid-interview and never deviated from his course. Lord Reith would have approved.

Dandy is the sprint king. In five- and six-furlong races up and down the land you can never discard his entrants. Sometimes, as with the five he ran for the £58,000 prize at Goodwood, there are plenty of them. But you usually know when and where the money is down. Gift Horse had been backed down from 14–1 to 9–2 second favourite in the 27-horse cavalry charge. And if former champion jockey Kieren Fallon had done the bubbling trainer a favour he had already received one in return, perhaps one that even saved his life.

Primed to the minute, bursting with muscle and energy, Gift Horse had been on his toes in the paddock. Seeing how fresh he was, Dandy Nicholls went to get hold of the horse’s head from his lass.