James Bowen (photographed) and Cath Williams were the shining lights for Wales at the Cheltenham Festival. The four days may not have delivered all the glorious memories Welsh racing had been hoping for, but there were stunning highlights nonetheless.
Much of the talk beforehand was of whether Sean Bowen would finally break his Festival hoodoo. The champion jockey headed to Cheltenham armed with a solid book of rides, but instead it was his younger brother James who enjoyed his time in the spotlight as he ended his wait for a first success at the meeting.
Bowen Jr was on the mark on the first day, steering Holloway Queen to an impressive wide-margin triumph in the National Hunt Chase.
And he didn’t have to wait long before doubling his tally. The following afternoon he made all the running on Jingko Blue – again for trainer Nicky Henderson – to record a comfortable win in the Bet MGM Cup.
Williams, meanwhile, made an immediate mark on the Festival after taking over the training licence from her husband Evan just days before.
Her first runner as a licence holder, Libberty Hunter, picked up a cool £84,000 for finishing second in the Queen Mother Champion Chase. The admirable 10-year-old was held up out the back of the 10-runner field early on, but made ground in the last half-mile and claimed second in the final 100 yards, though he had no chance with winner Il Etait Temps.
And the following day Williams went one better as Ask Brewster took the Kim Muir Chase, the improving youngster showing admirable battling qualities to hold off a Willie Mullins runner to claim the spoils by a neck under teenage amateur jockey Shane Cotter.
Ask Brewster began the season by winning at Chepstow’s Welsh Racing Festival in October.
But there was to be no fairytale Welsh success in the big race of the week, the Cheltenham Gold Cup. Haiti Couleurs, trained in Pembrokeshire by Rebecca Curtis and ridden by Sean Bowen, was bidding to become the first Welsh-trained winner of the race since Norton’s Coin shocked the racing world in 1990 by beating a field that included the great Desert Orchid at odds of 100-1.
The nine-year-old led the field for much of the contest, but weakened approaching the second-last fence and was pulled up. He could be in line for a tilt at the Grand National at Aintree, having already banked the Welsh and Irish versions in the last 12 months.
Ben Jones rode The Jukebox Man in the Gold Cup for owner Harry Redknapp, but he failed to give his true running and finished a well-beaten eighth. But Jones did leave Cheltenham with a winner. He took the Jack Richards Novices’ Handicap Chase on board Meetmebythesea in the colours of JP McManus.
Our next meeting at Ffos Las is our Family Fun Race Day on Sunday 12th April.
