New Year’s Day brought a change of luck for Lizzie Kelly, the jockey’s two wins at Cheltenham including the feature Relkeel Hurdle on the 16-1 shot Agrapart. The pair looked beaten as the 2-1 favourite, L’Ami Serge, went clear on the run-in but Kelly regathered her mount and drove him back in front as the line came.
Kelly and her stepfather, Nick Williams, who trained both her winners, have had a troubled start to this jumps season. From April to December, she managed only three victories, while Williams’s stable had just a couple more. Their period in the doldrums was the more surprising for following so soon after a Grade One success with Tea For Two last season and Agrapart’s win in the Betfair, Europe’s most valuable handicap hurdle.
The 23-year-old Kelly said after Agrapart’s return to the winner’s enclosure in this Grade Two: “This horse is a legend. I knew he had a great shout. We came in quietly at 16-1 but the way he won the Betfair, I knew he’d stay further and it’s rained all day, which was always going to suit him.
“It’s been a real hard season up to now. I know I’m trying my best out there and it is difficult, watching race after race with no real results. Fingers crossed this continues now.
“I had a double at Towcester on Boxing Day a few seasons ago and in point-to-points back in the day, but this is easily my most significant double.”
Kelly is the only woman to have ridden a Grade One winner in British jump racing. While professional female jump jockeys remain in short supply, five of them enjoyed wins around the country yesterday, the others being Lucy Alexander, Lucy Gardner, Megan Carberry and Bridget Andrews.
Williams said Agrapart would now be aimed at the Stayers’ Hurdle over an extra half-mile, since the horse might lack the pace for races over the Relkeel distance once the ground dries up in March. But the Stayers’ has a strong favourite in Unowhatimeanharry and bookmakers were sufficiently relaxed about the threat posed by Agrapart to leave him on 33-1.
Coo Star Sivola, who also scored for Kelly and Williams, is probably not good enough for a place in the Festival’s Neptune Novice Hurdle. The trainer suggested he might line up instead in the Martin Pipe Handicap, a race for conditional jockeys in which Kelly is able to take part.
Nicky Henderson was foiled by the defeat of L’Ami Serge, whose jockey, Daryl Jacob, had a mud-slathered boot slip out of its stirrup in the closing stages. But the Lambourn trainer won the other Grade Two on the card when Whisper held off the odds-on favourite, Clan Des Obeaux, by half a length.
Twice a Grade One winner over hurdles in years gone by, Whisper was in lifeless form last season but is unbeaten in two runs this winter, both over fences at Cheltenham. On this occasion, he benefited from a badly timed mistake by his main rival at the second-last.
“He’s just tough and genuine and is a real friend,” said Henderson, who suggested the nine-year-old’s Festival target would be the JLT, while adding the caveat that Whisper may yet step up to three miles for the RSA. “The key question now is whether he has a run before the Festival. He doesn’t need to have one.”
Willy Twiston-Davies rode his first winner at Cheltenham aboard Cogry, five years after being unseated from Baby Run with the Foxhunter Chase at his mercy. The jockey has been riding on the Flat for most of the intervening period but has recently taken a break from that and suggested here that the endless round of all-weather racing had ceased to grip him.
The jockey’s father, Nigel, who trains Cogry, was delighted for his son and also for the horse, who was seeking a boost to his confidence after two falls, an unseat and a brought-down, from four starts over fences this season. “That’s what they both needed,” said Twiston-Davies Sr.
“The horse had a miserable time and none of those things had been his fault. Ever since his last fall we thought we would give up over fences for one or two races. His jumping was just impeccable. It was so great that William could ride him.”
