“She is the best mare in the world, at least for the moment,” Sir Mark Prescott says as he counts down the hours until he discovers whether, as British racing’s longest-serving trainer at the age of 74, his horse Alpinista will win the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe at Longchamp in Paris on Sunday afternoon. The Arc is Europe’s richest horse race and Prescott, the most interesting man in racing, has a real chance of capping his career of 53 years by training the winner.
Then, in his wry way, he adds a cautionary reminder about Alpinista’s outstanding form. “But that could disappear like mercury. I’ve had some terrible trips to France where you’re hermetically sealed with the owner from eight in the morning to eight at night. People sharing your plane on the flight back have had the winner, so they’re drunk. Yours has run appallingly and the owner punctuates long silences by saying: ‘Just how much did you say it cost to get this thing here?’ I’ve had a few Dunkirks in my time.”
