In the hard-nosed, results-driven world of horse racing jockeys who make a mistake cannot always count on getting the chance to redeem themselves. Paul Townend, by contrast, was generously supported after throwing away a victory on Al Boum Photo in extraordinary fashion last year and on Friday he seized the chance of a victory so glorious as to ensure past sins were forgiven and forgotten.
“To repay them with a Gold Cup is the best feeling in the world,” said the 28-year-old jockey, who cannot have had high hopes of such a deliriously happy outcome. Al Boum Photo was the third string of the trainer Willie Mullins, according to the betting; but he is still a young, improving horse and perhaps that memory of the top-class novice chase they should have won last April was what made Townend pick the rangy bay as his ride in this race after Ruby Walsh took the supposedly plum mount on Bellshill.
“I can’t believe it,” the jockey added. “My body is physically shaking. You dream of winning a Gold Cup when you grow up. I can guarantee it’s as good as you dream it’s gonna be.”
There may be a much longer-lasting significance to this result in view of repeated speculation this week that Walsh’s storied career might be nearing its end. This Festival’s opening race showed the older man’s powers remain formidable but every return from injury seems harder than the last and it would surprise few people if he were to copy his younger sister, Katie, by retiring at next month’s Punchestown Festival, just as she did a year ago.
If Walsh was in fact minded to do so, Mullins would need Townend to step forward into the first-jockey’s job at his Carlow stable, still enormously powerful for all that some ground has been lost to Gordon Elliott. Townend has been champion jockey in Ireland but there may still have been doubters to query how he would fare in the main role; a Gold Cup victory is a powerful answer to any such impertinence. Mullins and Townend could replace Mullins and Walsh as the combination to fear at future Festivals and, if so, this was the perfect springboard.
Townend was cool and effective in guiding Al Boum Photo through the battlefield this race became. It was a triumph 20 years in the making, since the days when he pretended to be winning the Gold Cup while whizzing a pony round fields near his home in County Cork. He vividly recalled rushing off the school bus during Cheltenham week so as to be home in time to see the big race.
Still, a measure of his riding successes will always belong to Mullins, described by Townend as the man who made his career. “From the time I was an apprentice I’ve had him behind me, all the way up through. He’s guided me in the right way. To walk into Punchestown the next day after that happened with him at my back was a huge thing.”
In the immediate aftermath of his brain-fade last year, when he mistakenly steered Al Boum Photo round the last fence instead of over it, one senior trainer speculated the jockey would not ride for some time. “I’d say his head’ll be fried,” was the verdict. But soothing words from Mullins, Walsh and the horse’s owners, Joe and Marie Donnelly, allowed Townend to return and ride three winners the very next day.
Donnelly is a former bookmaker and as familiar as a man could be with the ups and downs of horse racing. Mullins said of the owner’s reaction to the Punchestown incident: “They’re in racing a long time and they know things happen, and they said not to worry, there was no issue between them and Paul and they wished him the best of luck.” The Punchestown drama was the first thing that came to Mullins when he realised that Townend and Al Boum Photo were on the point of victory here and he was “delighted” for the jockey to get such a victory.
“I am just so grateful to the owners for sticking by me,” Townend said. “I think I owed this to the horse. I swear to God, I’m trembling. I can’t believe it.”
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