Leading Man

Down the back straight for the final time in the Gold Cup and Galopin Des Champs is still well back in the field. Over the water jump and onto the open ditch, he closes up on Sounds Russian in front of him. Paul Townend takes his horse to the right. He could go to the left of his rival, towards the inside, save ground. There is enough room there, he is travelling well enough, but he goes outside.

Call it instinct, call it playing the percentages, figuring out the probabilities in an instant while travelling at 30 miles an hour. Call it intuition. The rider reasons, in fractions of seconds, that it has been a busy enough race for him up to that point, and he is travelling well. He doesn’t want to complicate things any more than he needs to. Best to keep it as simple as possible from there.

Over the next and Sounds Russian makes a slight mistake towards his inside. Paul Townend sits still though. Church-quiet. He can see the leaders now but it’s a hundred miles from the top of the hill at Cheltenham to the winning post.

He hears the crash up ahead all right, and he hears the shouts. He sees the horse on the ground and the red colours of Derek Fox shoot clear. There isn’t much time to do anything, between the landing side of the fence and the point at which you happen upon the horse that has fallen there. There never is. There isn’t much time for evasive action. Lucky, then, that there isn’t much need for evasive action. Ahoy Senor’s fall is flush in Sounds Russian’s path. Sean Quinlan is helpless, hapless. There is nowhere he can go and Sounds Russian goes to ground. By contrast, Galopin Des Champs hardly breaks stride, moves a tiny bit to his right, but maintains his rhythm and moves up easily into fifth place.

There’s the bounce of the ball right there. He doesn’t need to be lucky, he just needs not to be unlucky. If the ball bounces the other way, if they go inside instead of outside, Galopin Des Champs and Paul Townend would be a footnote to the 2023 Cheltenham Gold Cup. Instead, Galopin Des Champ is the hero, the central character, Paul Townend the leading player in the blue riband of national hunt racing.

It is a theme that runs through much of the season.

Paul Townend is relaxed, sitting easily on the couch, talking about his job as first rider for Willie Mullins. Pressure? Of course. Always pressure. That’s the nature of it. But it’s pressure that you want. 

“It’s a job that warrants so much respect,” he says. “I feel like I have matured into it. I’ve got a little more confidence in it, but I’d never take it for granted. You can’t. I think if you did, you wouldn’t be doing the job justice. And it’s too big of a job for you to be resting on your laurels. There are a lot of owners investing in it, you feel responsible, you have to perform, a maiden hurdle, a Grade 1, it doesn’t matter. They’re giving you their horse for that five or six minutes. You have a job to do.”

He has earned the job though. His roots with Willie Mullins run deep. He showed the promise that attracted the champion trainer’s attention, and he had the talent and the drive and the commitment to grab the opportunities when they presented themselves.

“I was so lucky. When I started there, I rode on the flat, got my foot in the door. (First cousin) Davy Condon went to England, to Nicky Richards’, Richie Kiely got hurt while I was there, David Casey was out. Ruby ruptured his spleen at Cheltenham while I was there, and I just kind of fell in for the ride on Hurricane Fly.”

He presents it as if he was the only option, but there was way more to it than that. They would have been breaking down the door to ride Hurricane Fly in the Grade 1 Royal Bond Hurdle at Fairyhouse in 2008, and yet, Willie Mullins had enough faith in his young rider to give him the opportunity.

Paul Townend was 18 at the time, just at the end of the second year of his Transition Year at Willie Mullins’. It was only four months earlier that he had gained his first major victory when riding Indian Pace for John Kiely to win the Galway Hurdle. He had managed just three winners over jumps before that.

When top chasing prospect Cooldine needed a rider on his chasing debut at Thurles the week before the Royal Bond Hurdle, with Ruby Walsh on the sidelines, Mullins had no hesitation in putting the East Cork man up. The teenager had ridden just one winner over fences before that, and he had never won a novices’ chase, but he gave Cooldine the perfect ride, got him into his rhythm early and won by 19 lengths. And it was a similar story on Hurricane Fly in the Royal Bond, cool as you like, his first Grade 1 win on his first Grade 1 ride.

Those deep roots foster an innate understanding between trainer and jockey, a mutual appreciation. The blips are inevitable, it’s the nature of the sport, of any sport at the top level, but the blips are only blips. The day after Al Boum Photo ran out at Punchestown’s 2018 festival, Townend rode a treble for Mullins. An hour after Lossiemouth got beaten in the Spring Juvenile Hurdle at Leopardstown, he won the Irish Gold Cup on Galopin Des Champs. A day after, it was the Irish Champion Hurdle on State Man. A month after, he won the Triumph Hurdle on Lossiemouth.

Willie Mullins phoned Paul Townend after the media hullabaloo that followed the trainer’s post-race comments on Lossiemouth’s defeat at Leopardstown.

“I only said what I said,” said the trainer.

“I know,” the jockey replied.

There’s that innate understanding right there.

It was some season: 23 Grade 1 wins to sail through the century landmark, as well as a first Irish Grand National, the product of one of the best rides that you will ever see in an Irish National, in any National, in any race.

Cheltenham was good too. He hoped it would be good.

“When you go through the book of rides that I had going to Cheltenham,” he says thoughtfully, “I had strong rides every day. I had a lot of decisions to make. The depth that was there to the runners that we had. There were some tricky decisions. And we were strong in the championship races. It was always going to be difficult for State Man to beat Constitution Hill, we knew that, but he still ran a massive race. Energumene had to leave behind his run in the Clarence House, but we thought that he would. And then there was Galopin Des Champs in the Gold Cup.”

He pauses for a second, considers Galopin Des Champs in the Gold Cup.

“The Gold Cup is the Gold Cup,” he says in a slightly quieter tone. “But I thought that Galopin Des Champs was one of my best rides of the week going over there. Honestly. After riding him at the Dublin Racing Festival, I just thought, ‘If things go right, he has a massive chance.’ And if things had gone wrong during the early part of the week, that he would still be a big bullet to fire in the Gold Cup.”

It was in 2019 that Paul Townend won his first Gold Cup on Al Boum Photo. Then he went back in 2020 and won it again on the same horse, just the third horse to win back-to-back Gold Cups since Arkle.

“To win the Gold Cup the first time, that was magic. He wasn’t fully expected. I didn’t think that, if I won it a second time, it could be as good. But it was. Every bit as good. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like if I happened to win it again.”

Things didn’t go wrong during the early part of the week. Quite the contrary actually. Things happen early at Cheltenham, a hundred miles an hour and no pause. Race 1, Supreme Novices’ Hurdle. Race 2, Arkle Trophy, rat-tat-tat, the match between El Fabiolo and Jonbon that people had been raving about for weeks, for months.

“You want to get a winner on the board at Cheltenham and you want to get a winner on the board early. That’s not being greedy. It’s just the nature of it, the horses we have, the chances we have. The expectation. Facile Vega was beaten by a very good horse (Marine Nationale) in the first race, the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle, but you put that behind you. You move onto the next race.”

Different horse, different race, different contest.

“When I got to the top of the hill in the Arkle, and the boys were going at it, I thought, ‘Just have confidence, forget the first race.’ I think that I can compartmentalise things better than I used to. Put the first race behind me, the first defeat, and move on. I suppose I have more faith in myself now that I am doing the right thing. And, if El Fabiolo had got beaten, I could have faced that when I came back in too. Move on to the next race. And everyone does. So I was happy enough to take a chance, bide my time.”

Townend moved El Fabiolo up nimbly on the inside of Dysart Dynamo at the second-last fence, and the Spanish Moon gelding picked up impressively from there, stretching away from Jonbon up the run-in.

“It’s huge that there is another race. A lot of people go there with one bullet, and if it misses, that’s it until next year. It probably helps in riding every day, not just at Cheltenham. If you get beaten on a horse who had a good chance, you go to the next race, the next day, with another horse who has a good chance. I’m very fortunate that way. You give every horse the best ride that you can give him or her, but if you get beaten, you can take the stick, and hopefully the next one will win. I’m in a very lucky position.”

The pressure continued. No relenting. Cheltenham Day 1 morphed into Cheltenham Day 2, out on the gallops in the morning, back to the house, try to have a bit of breakfast, have another quick look through the form. All the work is done, but it’s no harm having another look. Refresh everything.