Mike Vince recalls one of the most memorable John Smith's Cup gambles ahead of this weekend's feature handicap at York.
First run in 1960, and now the longest commercial sponsorship in British Racing, the John Smith's Cup has had everything.
The first year the winning jockey, Norman McIntosh, carried just 7 stone to win on Fougalle, Dick Hern trained six winners including the second and third year winners and in 1991 the world first heard of a certain young jockey named Francis Norton when he rode Halkopous to victory.
But it has so often been a race which, fiercely competitive as you’d expect for the money, has left the bookies in 'we’ve never had it so good' land.
Since 2012 when 33/1 shot Kings Warrior became the longest priced winner in recent decades, five of the subsequent seven winners have returned a double figure SP. Only one outright favourite, the Irish raider Mullins Bay with Kieren Fallon up, has landed the spoils since 2001.
But when the punters get it right, the scenes of jubilation are always special - and very few will match what happened in 1997, when the defeat of a Frankie Dettori-ridden favourite in a major Saturday televised Saturday handicap cost the bookies millions - and in the words of one of the winning connections "ripe for a trip to Sketchley".
That afternoon Dettori, with delicious irony, was riding a horse called Humourless for his then boss and mentor Luca Cumani.
But up against them in the customary full field was Pasternak, owned by a group headed by the Founding Editor of the Racing Post, Graham Rock. Like the man waiting for a Bishopric it was a case of 'long time no see’ about the horse who had scrambled home from a horse called Obelos in a big field in a low-grade Knavesmire handicap the previous October.
The biggest plus in punters' eyes about the four-year-old were those five words which have been sending fear and trembling in bookmakers' minds for decades: trained by Sir Mark Prescott.
In the build-up hours the world and his wife wanted to be on, the horse's price collapsed faster than many an England cricket team and he was down to 13/2 as the race got under way.
Clive Brittain’s Secret Aly made much of the running, with Dettori, in Sheikh Mohammed’s silks as was Fergal Lynch on the other market leader, Sir Michael Stoute’s Komi, never sighted.
Just over a furlong out George Duffield went for home and by the time he crossed the line the queues at the pay-out were rivalling Harrods on sale morning, the second home, Najm Mubeen, having thrown away his chance by displaying the most dramatic piece of hanging at the track since Dick Turpin to go down by half a length.
It was the most emphatic ‘Punters 1-0 Bookies’ you will ever see.
And no surprise when Sir Mark and Mr Duffield returned to duly stage an encore with Foreign Affairs in 2001 he was sent off the 5/2 favourite!
Hands up, too, all those who played up their Pasternak winnings when just three months later he demolished a 36-runner field to land the Cambridgeshire.
This is a race with so many memories - and it has been a delight in recent years to see jockeys like Thomas Brown, Ali Rawlinson and last year the hugely impressive Rob Hornby claim the big prize.
Pasternak was special, but beware the stats as so often in recent years it’s been a race that comes with a wealth warning for punters.
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