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The Independent UK

Jonathan Doidge

Dawn Run and Jonjo O’Neill, the perfect racing partnership that became Cheltenham Festival legend

Cheltenham (Organization) Jonathan Doidge Cheltenham Festival Festival Gold Jonjo ONeill Richard Johnson Gold Cup the Cheltenham Festival Turners

The article below is an excerpt from my newsletter: Independent Racing with Jonathan Doidge. To get my latest thoughts, tips and insights from the Cheltenham Festival pop your email address into the box above and the newsletter will land direct to your inbox every day of the Festival and then once each week afterwards.

As I write, we’re getting closer to knowing who is going where next week and it was a surprise that Mighty Park was left in the Supreme and taken out of the Turners, given that he was the favourite for the latter.

Connections clearly feel that he’s got the speed to win the two-mile novices’ championship and, with Willie Mullins having uttered the word “Faugheen” when talking of a comparable, he’s clearly very well liked at Closutton. With Old Park Star, Talk The Talk (still doubly declared and favourite for the Turners) a possible and El Cairos all fancied by their own connections, the meeting’s opener looks a mouthwatering way to start the week!

Talking of, well, talking… the talking has nearly stopped and there’s been plenty of it, including at the annual Rawdon Cricket Club Cheltenham Preview that I organise and host. This year we welcomed dual Gold Cup winner Richard Johnson and trainer Joel Parkinson to the team for the first time.

It’s always great to gauge the opinions of those involved with horses at that level, rather than we ‘number crunchers’ and I can tell you that Richard really fancies No Drama This End in the Turners and put that up as his banker for the meeting. The four-time champion jockey also highlighted Thomas Mor, trained by his old boss Philip Hobbs and Johnson White. He runs in the Brown Advisory on Wednesday and Richard feels he is way overpriced at 100/1 and should be more like a 16/1 chance on form, suggesting he is a cracking each-way bet.

His Gold Cup fancy is The Jukebox Man, while Joel, who runs Konfusion against Richard’s Imperial Saint in the Ultima, said his banker for the meeting is his own Grand Geste in the National Hunt Chase.

Also, just for this issue I’m going to get all nostalgic on you, for where would we be without those Cheltenham Festival glory days of yesteryear?!

You’ll have your own favourites. It might have been a plot you’d planned all season; a last-second hunch as the tapes went up that came off; a favourite horse or jockey that won ‘for you’ and I’m no different. In fact, I have loads of them, going right back to the first Gold Cup I recall, when The Dikler stole it from Pendil up the hill, all those years ago (that’s not a pop at The Dikler by the way as, for whatever childlike reason I had at the time, he was my favoured one of that pair of super chasers).

However, my childhood racing hero was Jonjo O’Neill and I wanted anything and everything that he rode to win. I was at school when Alverton won the Gold Cup, so had to be content with the replay but I successfully managed to be ill on the day Jonjo and Sea Pigeon finally got it right and won the Champion Hurdle. Brilliant.

Dawn Run, of course carried him to victory in the ’84 Champion Hurdle and I suspect we all loved her attitude and her partnership with my hero remains the stuff of legend.

So let’s fast forward to 1986. By now, I’m in the Sixth Form and on Thursdays we had games lessons all afternoon. Unfortunately for me, I couldn’t convince my parents that I was unfit to head to school but I decided that the Gold Cup was far more important than games. In my desperation to cheer on Jonjo and Dawn Run, I went to afternoon registration, got a ‘tick’ as being there and promptly galloped out of the exit to the bus stop to get home, quicker than a five furlong sprinter.

The following morning, I returned to school to a note in the register. Mr Bush, one of our games teachers, wanted to see me. Of course he did! My absence the previous afternoon had stuck out like a sore thumb, mainly because he’d spotted me legging it from the library window. Being informed I was a “disgrace” and a “disappointment” was only to be expected. Being threatened with expulsion if I stepped out of line again was a bit over the top.

However, I can promise you that all of that was worth it for every single second of that Cheltenham Gold Cup, as I gradually left the comfort of the sofa for the floor and was beating my fist on the carpet, as she came up the hill past Wayward Lad to win it!

I’ve just watched it all again and will never tire of doing so. I may have more of these over the next week but here’s your chance to share yours too. If you had one favourite Festival memory, what would it be and why?