There was no fairytale success here for Beer Goggles, from the small yard in Devon grieving the death on Monday of the trainer Richard Woollacott, but the man himself was remembered with great warmth by Lizzie Kelly, who rode Agrapart to land the Cleeve Hurdle.
Beer Goggles gave Woollacott the biggest moment of his career at Newbury last month but was not at his best this time and faded into fifth, leaving Agrapart to edge out Wholestone in a finish that seems unlikely to prove influential when the Festival comes around in March.
No more than three miles separate Agrapart’s stable at George Nympton from the South Molton yard where Woollacott was found dead at the age of 40. “We’re all heartbroken,” Kelly said. “He trained down the road. I rode a winner for him once. Do you know, it was the only outside winner I ever had, riding for Richard Woollacott in a ladies race at Huntingdon. “We’ll miss him dearly. He was a great person, always offering to give Mum a hand at the races.”
Briefly, Kelly acknowledged a feeling of guilt that she had won, rather than Beer Goggles but added: “I’m sure Richard would be very happy to see us win a race. It’s just horrifying. Someone who has always been there, has had a massive storyline in point to pointing and then moved into racing, the familiar face that we won’t see any more.”
But Kelly also had memories of Woollacott that made her smile, notably from the days when, as a 16-year-old, she rode against him in point to points. “I had this nice horse that looked like Mum had bought it so Lizzie could go pointing, like all the other trainers’ daughters ... We had a circuit to go and I was travelling really well, thinking: ‘Right, here we go,’ and I heard him go: ‘Lizzie, Lizzie, Lizzie! You’re going a bit fast, you wanna slow down a bit! Long way to go ... ’”
It was a blatant bit of gamesmanship, borne of the realisation that Woollacott’s mount was toiling to keep up. Kelly considered briefly whether she should listen to this advice from a rival before deciding she was more scared of her mother, who trained her horse, than of Woollacott. She pressed on and won easily.
“He was a great man, good fun and I learned a lot from him, he was always someone you could chat to, a great jockey. I think people have forgotten quite how good he was on the back of a horse.”
Kelly feels that people in racing cannot be relied on to spot the signs of mental illness, like the one from which Woollacott is said to have been suffering. “In racing, you can get a bit lost in the middle of it all. You feel like you should be feeling better because you’ve had a winner and you don’t feel great and you can’t figure out why. People need to be more aware and make that time to sit down and say: ‘Look, what is it?’”
Kayley Woollacott, Richard’s widow, was here to supervise the horse’s preparation, having inherited the licence to train. A family member made the same point as Kelly, that mental illness ought to be more readily discussed within the sport.
While Beer Goggles may get the chance to leave this form behind in the Stayers’ Hurdle here in March, Agrapart will not. He is so dependent on soft ground that connections feel he does not belong in that race.
Definitly Red, by contrast, will give the north a standard-bearer in the Gold Cup, having pounded to an eight-lengths success in the Cotswold Chase for his Yorkshire-based trainer, Brian Ellison.
Bristol De Mai turned in another disappointing show in third but few runners from the Nigel Twiston-Davies yard are winning just now and it is not beyond him to fare better in the big race in March if the stable recovers its form.
Sedgefield 1.10 Reverant Crust (nap) 1.40 Burrenbridge Hotel 2.10 King’s Reste (nb) 2.40 Ascendant 3.10 Never Up 3.40 Wazowski 4.10 Toboggan’s Gift
Fontwell ABANDONED
