The Times
11 March 2025
If the three Willie Mullins trained favourites Kopek Des Bordes, Majborough and Lossiemouth duly collect this afternoon and Constitution Hill is half the horse we know him to be, bookies will be reeling. For they will have been hit by the £50m blow that Willie Mullins and jockey Ruby Walsh and the mare Annie Power threatened to deliver 10 years ago.
For Walsh and trainer Mullins had already won three races that afternoon. Douvan had powered home in the Supreme Novices Hurdle. The little bundle of aggression that was Un De Sceaux had run them ragged in the Arkle and in the Champion Hurdle Faugheen showed everybody why they called him “Faugheen The Machine. All had been favourite but Annie Power looked the biggest certainty of all.
She had 14 rivals for that running of the two and half mile Mares Hurdle but throughout the journey her tall chestnut frame and Walsh’s poised figure moved with predatory ease. They took command at the second last and as Paul Townend on stable companion Glens Melody tried to challenge, Walsh re-threaded his reins, switched his whip across to his left-hand side and set fair for home.
I was standing right by that last hurdle, rapt in admiration as horse and jockey swept up to that last hurdle, unaware of bookmakers around the country feeling like schoolboys outside the Headmaster’s study in the days when caning was still a teacher’s leisure time pursuit.
Walsh became the most successful jockey in Cheltenham history with his unique blend of beautifully balanced horsemanship and razor-sharp race-craft. Now he was to have what he ruefully calls his “Frankie Dettori Moment” in recollection of the little Italian’s 1996 Ascot “Magnificent Seven” which one bookmaker described as “leaving bodies floating down the river.”
He and the mare stormed towards us, her neck set, the rhythm relentless, the rider’s pumping elbows in easy tune with the gallop. But the stride for the leap was a very long one. Taking an extra stride would have cost little momentum but up she came.
She flew through the air in a mighty soaring arc but the parabola was not quite perfect, one of her forelegs clipped the top of the hurdle just enough to upset her balance on landing and she and Walsh skidded before doing a spectacular capsize.
Mercifully Annie stood up, won four more races including the next year’s champion hurdle and retired to stud from which her Galileo son Mystical Power has graduated to top class success last season and bid to put dismal shows behind him by taking the Stayers Hurdle on Thursday.
Walsh also stood up, his body bowed in dismay at how much had so suddenly been snatched from his grasp. He and we will never know if his fate would have been any different if he had taken a more cautious or even a more forceful approach to the final jump.
That doesn’t mean that he doesn’t have a view as in retirement he has become as clear and fearless as a pundit as he was in his stellar career on the racetrack. People like to say that Walsh is “Racing’s Gary Neville” but that’s not really a fair comparison. For while he may not have stored up Neville’s TV longevity or property millions, his unique sporting career was a notch even higher than that of Manchester United’s excellent if sometimes over opinionated right back.
He now believes in asking Annie Power an effort to repel what was never a serious threat from Paul Townend and Glens Melody as they launched a despairing challenge off the final turn, he had the mare motoring at a needlessly high tempo.
“I didn’t think I was doing anything wrong at the time,” Walsh said yesterday. “But given another go I would never have let out an inch of rein off the bend and changed gear. Paul went by me and I moved to cover him and get the advantage back. I didn’t need to given how she responded when I did.”
This afternoon Nico De Boinville may well find himself facing the Walsh dilemma. He must shut his mind from brutal truth that an Annie Power type fall is the most conceivable of the unlikely reasons for a Constitution Hill defeat and that was precisely what his champion nearly did at this track in January.
Walsh still likes to shake his ever-whitening head in disbelief at how the bookies escaped the greatest caning in Cheltenham history. It didn’t happen that day. But this time it might.