Prescott, who travelled to Japan with Albanova’s full sister, Alborada, in 1999, only for the mare to go lame before the race, would be keen for another go – “I’m sure Miss Rausing’s eagle eye will have observed, but she gets a $3m bonus if she’s lucky enough to win the Japan Cup,” he pointed out, while patting his wallet – but immediate retirement probably remains the most likely option.įor Prescott and Morris, meanwhile, it will be back to the Newmarket routine on Monday morning, and so too for William Butler, the trainer’s assistant for nearly 20 years, whose accession to the top job at Heath House is now likely to be delayed once again. “We need to think a bit and discuss,” Rausing said, before suggesting the Japan Cup and Breeders’ Cup Turf as possible targets for her much-coveted first winner of the Arc. I had a girlfriend and we walked out down the track, and there was an old man banging in divots and he said: ‘What won the first?’ And I said: ‘I did,’ and I thought it was the best moment of my life, but this is every bit as good. “It had no chance of winning, and it won. “I always thought that the best day of my racing life was when I rode a winner on my first ride at 15 or 16,” Prescott said. The race was in effect over, however, from the moment that the gun-metal grey sauntered into the lead a furlong and a half out, with Morris motionless in her saddle. Vadeni, with the soon-to-be-banned Christophe Soumillon in the saddle, and Torquator Tasso, last year’s shock winner, were closing in on Alpinista in the final strides and her eventual winning margin was just half a length. His enthusiasm for blood sports, which dates back to a visit to Pamplona for the bull run in his teens, could be a sticking-point for some, but he is, essentially, a complete one-off, and a tonic in an age when huge stables dominate international Flat racing. “Eccentric” and “old-school” are two descriptions that follow Prescott around, in much the same way that a cloud of smoke was ever-present until he quit his 10-a-day Cuban cigar habit a few years ago.
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