“Absent friends” must be the toast at Sandown on Saturday, where a big effort will be made to memorialise Houblon Des Obeaux, one of the gamest of steeplechasers who hardly had a sick day in his 10-year career but died of a mid-race heart attack there last month. The plan had been for him to return for the Veterans Final, a race he won last year, which will now be run in his name.
His familiar dark face with its white strip will adorn the front of the racecard and footage of his three wins at the Esher track will be played on the screens there during the day. “It’s lovely that they’re honouring him,” says Venetia Williams, who trained ‘Houblon’ at her Ross on Wye base after he arrived from France in December 2010.
“We’ve had him since he was a three-year-old and he’s just been such a wonderful horse; lovely, kind, very self-contained, sound and enthusiastic.”
The two people closest to Houblon were his groom, Fran Hargest, and his regular work-rider, Jerry Roberts, who is travelling head lad at Williams’s yard. “I say he was my best friend,” reflects Roberts, who cannot keep the emotion out of his voice as he discusses the old horse. “It’s like losing a member of your family.
“I rode him every day in exercise and have done for years and years. He was unique. If he was a person, he’d always get out of bed on the right side. He always got up with a smile on his face and couldn’t wait to get out in the morning. He was champing to get out and do his work every day.
“He owned Venetia’s gallops. He was very easy-going, friendly, and he had a special place in all our hearts, not just mine and Fran. She looked after him like a child, because that’s how she is, and he behaved like a naughty schoolboy, because that’s how he was.”
"He's got the ability and he loves his job... he's everything you'd want". Take a look back at Houblon Des Obeaux's Sandown Park highlights ahead of the Final of the Veteran's Chase Series this Saturday. pic.twitter.com/LAoa7p77pz
— Sandown Park (@Sandownpark) January 2, 2020
Houblon Des Obeaux’s arrival in Britain was the result of a chance meeting at a charity opera between Williams and Toby Blackwell, owner of the book chain. On learning that she trained horses, he asked if she had had any success and Williams, having won the previous year’s Grand National with Mon Mome, was able to reply in the affirmative.
Blackwell asked the trainer to source a promising young horse as a present for his wife, Jennifer, and Houblon Des Obeaux is credited with having brightened her final years as dementia eventually took hold. Thereafter, Blackwell shared ownership with his daughter, ‘Snippet’ Maclay and the pair are expected to present the trophy after Saturday’s race.
Aidan Coleman with Houblon des Obeaux after victory at Cheltenham. Photograph: David Jones/PA Archive/PA Images
From the start, it was clear that Houblon had been an inspired purchase. His first race in the Blackwell red and blue colours was a Grade One hurdle at Chepstow in which he finished second, with the eventual star Smad Place behind him. “His marvellous attitude was the reason he was as good as he was,” says Aidan Coleman, who rode the horse 31 times. “If he was a hand bigger, he definitely would have been top class.”
They won the Denman Chase and two valuable Ascot handicaps together but Houblon’s best runs were in defeat, most notably when he carried top weight in the Hennessy and finished just three lengths behind Many Clouds, who was carrying 6lb less and went on to win the Grand National. One of the reasons that Coneygree tackled and won the Gold Cup as a novice was that his connections were so impressed he had beaten Houblon Des Obeaux at Newbury the previous month.
“He’s got the ability and he loves his job, so he’s everything you’d want,” was the verdict of Charlie Deutsch, Houblon’s jockey in recent seasons, after they enjoyed what proved to be their final victory together, at Sandown in November. The horse’s sustained enthusiasm for racing, after 10 years of constantly taking on quality rivals at the toughest tracks, was his most endearing trait.
“The last easy race he had was probably when he won a novice chase at Worcester in 2012,” says Coleman. Roberts adds: “He never got sick of anything, he never saw a vet. I think he was lame once, when he had a corn in his foot a few years ago. He matched strides with a lot of good horses throughout his career. He was that step below the very best, for sure, but he ran in two Gold Cups, two Grand Nationals. And he was a horse that could put a smile on your face every morning.”
