10th March 2009 - BINOCULAR AT LAST - CHAMPION HURDLE - Brough Scott

BINOCULAR AT LAST - CHAMPION HURDLE

Don’t ever think it is easy. As they swung into the straight in the Champion Hurdle, Tony McCoy had got Binocular to within a couple of lengths of the two leaders. He had hardly moved a muscle compared to his all out-heroics on Wichita Lineman a race before. But something told you that this was trouble. Something about the angle of that long lean body pared down to do 10 stone 9 in that “it-couldn’t-happen-but-it-did” finishing effort a race before. Something about the way his rider pulled the right rein to move Binocular out to strike up Punjabi’s outside. As they swept past us you could see what the something was. A.P. was nursing, not holding.

In some ways the favourite has been nursed all season. It was a joy to watch him stalk his field round Haydock and Ascot and then wing away over the last hurdle as McCoy loosed the brake. Binocular is not a big horse but he is one of those keen, neat, fast-flick jumpers that jockeys love to ride. Yesterday he jumped quick and neat enough as the champion took him round the inside, but even down the backstraight there was a sense of him needing to save energy as well as ground. Walsh was up front on Celestial Halo. And he most certainly wasn’t making it easy. He was going to make it hurt.

Down the hill they came as all the Champion hurdlers have come before. Hardy Eustace was still up with them just as he had been in his glory days of 2004 and 2005. The three winners since then; Brave Inca, Sublimity and Katchit, were already beat. At the third last Hardy Eustace bent to the burden of the years, and Celestial Halo had Punjabi join battle with Barry Geraghty poised as much more than a mere spoiler for McCoy on the “stable selected” behind.

But when a horse has been backed in to 6-4 favourite, quite unreal assumptions grow. The might of money willed that there had to be power aplenty at the end of Binocular’s rein. Crossing the third last McCoy had got to within three lengths of the two up front. Still calm and unbothered as he crossed the second last , he was surely perfectly poised to take the duelling leaders up the hill. But then that moment of truth right in front of us as he pulled out to ask the question. It was clear this was going to be no simple Ascot or Haydock repeat. A.P. sent Binocular in neat and quick at the hurdle, but there was no surge. Only a real struggle would this Champion Hurdle win.

In Wichita Lineman’s race, victory had always looked utterly impossible but McCoy had kept the implacability of a man who believed that somehow the leader might tire and the race be snatched out of the fire. Now, however much the punters roared, there was no bite in the hooves beneath. On better ground, at a less demanding track, and with another race since Boxing Day maybe there would have been the gear-changing acceleration that the world awaited. But now, there was only guts. Binocular stuck on. At the line he had got to within a head of Celestial Halo, only another neck behind Punjabi, the new king. But he was not champion, was not a winner for McCoy in the McManus green and yellow. It had been tale of two hoops. Don’t ever think it easy.