Racing: Giant step for Man on a mission

HUMBLE pie was not on the menu at Cheltenham yesterday, but great dollops of it were being served up in the winners' enclosure. First, that great big teddy bear One Man strolled up the hill to rout the best two- mile specialists either side of the Irish Sea, bringing a smile as broad as the Cumbrian hills to the face of his trainer, Gordon Richards, confined to barracks at his Greystoke base.

No sooner had the Queen Mother presented the pounds 94,000 prize to One Man's connections and ridden off in her golf buggy than the winners' berth was filled by the most infamous horse in racing, Top Cees, star of Court 13, silent witness in the celebrated case of the Sporting Life v the Ramsdens. The press room waited for the Channel 4 interview with scarcely disguised relish: "Tell us a little about this horse, Mrs Ramsden..." "Well, Derek..."

One Man left emotions scattered across Cleeve Hill. This is the horse who was scheduled to fill the public vacuum left by the retirement of Desert Orchid all those years ago only to suffer the disdain of the cognoscenti and the scorn of impecunious punters. A park course champion, he was labelled, but not Prestbury Park. Unbeatable round the flat acres of Kempton, heartless up the Cheltenham hill. "A question no one can really answer," Nicky Richards, son of the trainer, said of the gaping hole in One Man's curriculum vitae.

One Man provided his own emphatic answer yesterday. There was no Cheltenham voodoo nor lack of guts. He had been entered in the wrong race all along. Twice a failure in the Gold Cup, he returned to a distance not travelled since his novice hurdling days and triumphed with a swagger usually reserved for the King George on Boxing Day. "He is a really high-class horse," added Richards. "We always knew he'd come back and win good races."

One of the doubters had to watch the procession from an uncomfortable distance. You could have forgiven Richard Dunwoody the sideways glance he gave the video rerun of the finish as he returned on the well-beaten Irish challenger, Klairon Davis. "Nothing would surprise me about One Man," the former champion had said in the morning. "We've had some great times together." In the winners' enclosure, Brian Harding barely had enough breath to explain the twists and turns which had led him to the greatest day of his riding career and, in the way of National Hunt racing, to the swift erasure of the darkest year of his life.

Resigned to watching the race at home on television, an injury to his best friend, Tony Dobbin, brought him a phone call at Sedgefield on Tuesday, a gruff message from Gordon Richards - "don't let me down, will you" - and an armchair ride with a difference. For most of last year, Harding was compulsorily laid off by the Jockey Club having suffered severe concussion in a fall. His time had been spent "doing his two", in racing parlance, on cold mornings at Richards's yard and, as he rode out One Man, imagining a day like yesterday. "Gordon stood by him like a father," Michael Caulfield, head of the Jockeys' Association, said.

The story of the race is simply told. From the tape, One Man and Ask Tom turned a champions' field into a private duel. For half a circuit, they matched thrilling strides until the favourite broke, hampered by an "interrupted preparation" according to Tom Tate, his trainer, leaving One Man to tackle the hill alone. "We were going a right gallop and I wondered how long we could keep it up," Harding said. "But I gave him a little breather going up the hill and when he quickened again, I thought, `If they pass me, they'll be doing well here.' Or Royal came closest, but four lengths was still a handsome response to the critics. Further back in fifth place came the valiant Viking Flagship, who will now enjoy a well-deserved retirement.

Dunwoody's moment was not long delayed. But the cheers which greeted a handsome victory by Florida Pearl in the Royal & SunAlliance Chase must have resembled a dirge for the bookmakers. Istabraq, Unsinkable Boxer on St Patrick's Day; French Holly, a deeply impressive winner of the Royal & SunAlliance Hurdle, and Florida Pearl yesterday. "One of the worst days I've ever known at Cheltenham," Victor Chandler, one of the biggest rails bookmakers, said on the opening night, which perhaps explains the niggardly 8-1 offered on the Willie Mullins-trained Florida Pearl for the 1999 Gold Cup. Another eloquent day for the talking horses today and the bookmakers will be left speechless as well as penniless.

The final thought, however, on a breathtaking Festival day should belong to a detached observer of the big race. Forced to retire from the saddle after a car crash, Frannie Woods had to watch the big screen by the paddock instead of partnering Klairon Davis. "I just felt desperate," he said. He was talking about the race, but he could easily have meant the whole, tortuous, ritual of the Festival.