Fist-pumps and whip-waving are usually reserved for the Festival meeting here in March, but if any jockey deserved to celebrate a victory on Saturday, it was Ian Popham. He made the most of it as Annacotty crossed the line in the Paddy Power Gold Cup, at the end of a year which opened with Popham on a liquid diet after breaking his jaw on Boxing Day.
Popham was injured a year to the day after recording what was the biggest win of his career when he steered Annacotty to victory in the Grade One Feltham Novice Chase at Kempton. That success too came after a long run of bad luck with injuries, including a broken pelvis which took six months to heal and was then broken again a few months later.
It was early August before Popham returned to the saddle after breaking his jaw. In the meantime Liz Prowting, the owner of Annacotty, had decided to switch the seven-year-old from Martin Keighley’s yard to be trained by Alan King, but Prowting kept faith with Popham and his determined performance in the saddle played its part on Saturday in getting Annacotty home in the first major race of the National Hunt season.
“That was the most incredible feeling,” Popham said afterwards, “because I thought my career was on its backside. At the end of last season, I was riding just moderate horses with no results and it began getting to me. I’m hugely thankful to the owners of this horse because that was only my third winner of the season and until last week I hadn’t ridden a winner at all [this year]. It’s funny how this game goes, you’re up and down like a yo-yo.
“Last season I broke my collarbone three times and then broke my jaw and smashed my face up and basically missed all of the season. It was fantastic, because riding in races like this is what you dream about. It was a release [at the end], racing’s about confidence and you do lose a bit of belief in yourself, so to come in here and win a race like this gives you confidence. It meant the world to me.”
Annacotty was half a length in front of Buywise with another three-quarters back to the top weight Sound Investment as the winner’s new trainer celebrated his first success in this race.
“We’d been happy with him at home but you never really know until the race,” King said. “I’m delighted for Liz and sorry for Martin, he’s a great mate but the horse was going to move over the summer and the view was, if I wasn’t going to take him, someone else was.
“The interesting thing is that his mother, Mini Moo Min, was the very first winner I trained back in 1999, so I’ve always had an eye on him.”
Annacotty may struggle to follow up this success once his handicap mark is reassessed, but Paul Nicholls was delighted with Sound Investment’s close third under 11st 12lb and he is now the third-favourite at 10-1 with Coral and Bet365 for the Ryanair Chase next March.
The favourites for the first two races on the card went off at odds-on in small fields, but both failed to live up to expectations, the biggest disappointment being the defeat of David Pipe’s Un Temps Pour Tout, who won the French Champion Hurdle in June, on his debut over fences in three-mile novice chase.
Un Temps Pour Tout jumped soundly for Tom Scudamore but had no answer when Vicente, a 16-1 chance who was giving the favourite 8lb, pulled alongside on the turn for home. The winner showed improved form after finishing third here last time out but, for the moment, his long-term target is more likely to be the Festival’s four-mile National Hunt Chase rather than a Grade One.
“If he’d jumped the last day, he should have won, and that’s what gave me hope to run today,” Paul Nicholls, Vicente’s trainer, said. “That was a proper performance giving 8lb to the second horse.
“He might be one for the four-miler [but] that run puts him right up among the best of them if you take it literally at the weights. The four-miler would be the type of race for him because he stays forever and we’ve got [leading amateur rider] Will Biddick on the team as well.”
Wolf Of Windlesham, an exposed 60-rated handicapper on the Flat, also improved abruptly to beat a field including the Nicholls-trained 5-6 favourite Romain De Senam in the JCB Triumph Hurdle Trial – a success which Stuart Edmunds, the winner’s trainer, attributed to the sporting instincts of Michael Lawrence, the winner’s owner.
“To be fair, I would have gone to Ludlow on Thursday,” Edmunds said, “but the owner wanted to come here. It was a bold move and fair dos to him.”
