Pride of Wales
Robin Oakley
‘ou won’t have to stray too far from YPaul Nicholls’s elbow today,’ Henrietta Knight told me after the second at Newbury on Hennessy Gold Cup day. Sure enough, Nicholls and his stable jockey Ruby Walsh took the third race with Saintsaire, just as they had taken the first two with Paul Green’s Silverburn and Sir Robert Ogden’s Opera Mundi.
But just when the jumping season seemed to be settling into a predictable pattern a great whoosh of fresh air, lightly laced with leek, came sweeping across the Severn Bridge into the English jumping establishment with the triumph in the big race of State of Play, tuned to perfection on Aberogwrn Farm, Llancarfan, Vale of Glamorgan, by young trainer Evan Williams.
It wasn’t as if we hadn’t all sensed it coming. Along with his Haverfordwestbased compatriot Peter Bowen, Williams has been catching eyes with summer jumping results, achieved with cheap horses and other stables’ cast-offs. Only a month ago, I wrote that we would hear more of him. And both Paul Green and Sir Robert Ogden, a canny pair, have marked his progress by sending him horses. (Sir Robert’s Backstage was the first of our winter Twelve to Follow to succeed.) But the Hennessy already, with a 10–1 shot having his first run of the season? That was brazen-hussy boldness. Newbury punters reckoned maybe the experienced Charles Egerton could achieve such a feat and they made Montgermont the 9–2 favourite. Last year, Montgermont was trained by Lavinia Taylor. Lavinia has retired, but she and husband John have kept a few horses. A former trainer’s choice of trainer — one of the highest accolades — is always intriguing and they have one with Charles Egerton, one with Noel Chance and another with new neighbour Paul Webber. At least, Lavinia con fided, she had somebody else to do the worrying now.
Montgermont ran promisingly until the 17th but he then went out like a light, perhaps bursting a blood vessel. It was State of Play, beautifully ridden by Paul Moloney, who had been studying the tapes of past Hennessys, who ran out the convincing winner by four lengths. And it was as much fun talking afterwards to his eloquent trainer as it was watching the race. Indeed, Evan enjoyed his ‘massive day’ so much that the Newbury staff might well have finished up putting him out with the empties the next morning had the unsaddling enclosure not been needed after the next race.
James Tudor, the yard’s capable young amateur jockey and assistant trainer, normally rides State of Play at work. But before the Hennessy the task had fallen to his trainer. With the leaves swirling and the wind blowing up his tail, he says, he had never been so worried by half an hour’s riding. He knew what he had and how ready the horse was. ‘I was scared to say how confident I was,’ he said. ‘I can see him developing into a horse to give a bit of a shock to Mr Nicholls’s great white hope.’ There was pride in what he and his keen young staff have done: ‘Bringing a horse to a peak for a race is always hard. And it’s only so often that you get the chance to make an impact.’ There was self-deprecation: ‘I’m not really a trainer. I’m a farmer who trains horses.’ But there was, too, a touch of the beware-of-the-underdog grit and cussedness once typified by the Pontypool front row: ‘I’m a stockman who gets up in the morning with a bunch of mad Welshmen and gets on with it. While I may not be the best trainer, no one is going to beat me for hard work. I haven’t got the best facilities, no “this track and that track”. I’ve got a s— old shavings track, but however good the facilities you can’t win races unless you can train them.’ There was a touch of relish, too, in seeing off racing snobs who think big races can’t be won from his side of the Severn: ‘It’s about hard work, not about wining and dining and tittle-tattle. I worry about what happens my side of the farm gate. We’re so far removed from Newmarket and Lambourn’s fashionable trainers.’ Evan Williams is, glory be, an instinctive trainer with a sense about animals. ‘You can’t milk a herd of cows unless you know your cows. I’m used to dealing with a few hundred animals ... I couldn’t say what I look for in a horse but I know what I like. You have to go with what you like because, as with a woman, you may be together for a long time.’ Nor is he a slave to fashion: ‘It’s all got too medical and scientific with all these blood tests and trachea washes.’ No labs, then, at Aberogwrn Farm.
Long may he flourish. As we left the winner’s enclosure Sir Robert Ogden warmly offered his congratulations. ‘You’ll be doubling the number you send him now, won’t you?’ I prompted. ‘There’s three on the way to you, young man,’ said Sir Robert. ‘But he needs more boxes.’ You need some luck, Evan admitted, but in racing even the nice guys don’t always get it. Hennessy winner State of Play had previously been with Paul Webber, who won a bumper and a hurdle with him for Carolyn Waters but then sent him to the sales after he had a problem. Sporting enough to have written to the young Welshman congratulating him on earlier achievements with his 18,000-guinea purchase, Paul was seen cheering home State of Play. Suffering one of those agonising spells which come to all trainers, going 166 days and 48 runs without a winner, Paul could really have done with one in the next. Instead, having led after the last, his No Full was worn down and lost half a length to Charles Egerton’s Gallant Approach. It truly is a bittersweet game.
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