Last stop for Trainglot

A Grand old servant bade farewell to racing here yesterday in the best possible style. Trainglot, running for the 40th and last time, bowed out with a gallant victory under Richard Dunwoody in the afternoon's feature event, the Letheby & Christopher Long Distance Hurdle.

The diminutive chestnut 10-year-old is, according to his trainer Jimmy FitzGerald, "the little horse with the heart of a lion". He has now notched up more than pounds 200,000 in prize money over hurdles and on the Flat for his owner-breeder, the Marquesa de Moratalla, including the 1990 Cesarewitch at Newmarket and last year's Coral Cup at Cheltenham.

The decision to retire Trainglot was taken before yesterday's race and, indeed, he made harder work of beating his four rivals than he would have done in his prime, asserting his authority only at the last flight of hurdles before staying on to take the Grade Two contest by four lengths.

The Marquesa has lost three good ones in action over the past 12 months - Ubu and Ucello in France and Agistment at last month's Cheltenham Festival - and did not want to tempt fate further with one of her most faithful retainers.

Trainglot will now join such other distinguished performers in the red colours as the Gold Cup hero The Fellow and two-mile star Sybillin, a former stablemate, in the grassy meadows at his owner's Hertfordshire stud, Childwick Bury. FitzGerald, who has had the tiny chestnut in his Malton yard since he was two, said: "We had to go to Hamilton to win with him then, but we got 8-1. He obliged a few times when we needed it." One of those occasions was Trainglot's Cesarewitch, in which he and Willie Carson landed a huge ante-post gamble to give his trainer his biggest Flat win and his fondest memory of the horse.

"It was great to win a race like that, and we had a few bob on. And he fought like a lion to win the Coral Cup last year. He's never let us down when we thought he might do it, but at his age he won't improve any more and he's too small to give lumps of weight away in handicaps.

"He is so genuine, and has a special place in our hearts. And his earnings apart, he has a really lovely personality. He'd make the best ladies' hunter in Yorkshire if we can have him back next winter."

Bertone, winner of the Kyle Stewart Handicap Chase, is no superstar, but the fact that he is racing at all is a testament to his honesty and courage at his own level. The eight-year-old had to spend 18 months in his box with a broken knee sustained when another horse jumped on him after a fall during his first steeplechase.

"It was an injury they don't usually come back from," said his trainer Kim Bailey, "You really have to admire him." Yesterday's win, Bertone's sixth since his unfortunate introduction to fences, was fine compensation for a good third-placed effort over a distance too far at Aintree eight days previously.

There was a shock for most punters when I'm A Dreamer won the opener at 50-1, but the seven-year-old's owner-trainer Mandy Rowland managed to cope. During the rose-tinted throes of a birthday party celebration the previous evening, she and her friends collected a kitty of pounds 300, which was duly invested each-way and may well ensure that the hangovers extend another 24 hours.

The Flat season proper kicks in with the opening of the Craven meeting at Newmarket on Tuesday.

As a taster at the Curragh yesterday, Cool Edge, a galloping companion of Mark Tompkins' 2,000 Guineas candidate Musical Pursuit, made short work of one of Ireland's hopes for the colts' Classic in the Group Three Gladness Stakes over seven furlongs. Cool Edge, a six-year-old, made all to beat Desert King, an pounds 8,000 supplementary entry to the Derby on Thursday, by three lengths.