Deano has his day in Long Walk Hurdle
Beaten three times into the runner-up spot in the same race, the veteran hurdler was given an exemplary ride by Tony McCoy to end Baracouda’s attempt at an 11th win on the bounce.
The £60,000 contest was run in a dense fog, which forced racegoers to use their imagination as to what might have been going on for long periods of the extended three-mile contest.
But as Deano’s Beeno appeared out of the mist on the run to the second-last hurdle it was clear that Baracouda and jockey Thierry Doumen had a fight on their hands.
McCoy was at least three lengths up on the Martin Pipe-trained winner and still yet to ask for everything from his mount.
By the final flight, the deficit was down to about a length and the 4-11 favourite seemed sure to win the race for the third successive year.
But McCoy hasn’t become the most successful jumps jockey of all time for no reason and giving everything he had got, he conjured a battling rally out of the 14-1 winner.
Baracouda got to within a neck but no closer and faded in the dying strides to go down by a length.
“He really deserved to win a Grade One race,” smiled the winning jockey.
“As he is getting older I think he may be starting to save a bit for himself, and I thought that if that was the case I might be able to keep a little in reserve for when the favourite got to me.
“You know that a horse like Baracouda is bound to come to you, so you just need to ride the race from your horse’s point of view.
“When I squeezed up on Deano’s going to the last he pricked his ears and I knew that he had saved a bit.
“I had been thinking that if I could still be in front at the last without really having got after him, then we would have a chance.”
The winner is owned by the Axom syndicate, who bought the gelding off the Flat more than five years ago. “There were about 20 of us here today and none of us thought we had a chance of beating the French horse,” said syndicate member Roger Coleman.
“He is really best going left-handed so you couldn’t have been very hopeful.
“But Tony gave him a great ride and tactically it worked out as just as he had planned.
“He is a bit of a clever horse, which is not always a good thing and he often has a think about things, but he was really brave today and we are all just over the moon.”
Despite the pain of defeat, Baracouda’s trainer Francois Doumen was refusing to be too downcast.
“You remember Cheltenham,” he said, referring to his charge’s easy win in last season’s Bonusprint Stayers’ Hurdle. “That is the way he needs to be ridden.
“Personally I am still very happy. This is not the end for Baracouda.
“Thierry blamed himself that he came too early.
“He said he should have let Deano’s Beeno jump the last on his own and then try to get him on the run-in.”
“But today you got the reason why he was ridden the way he was last time, he needs to come as late as possible as he can be so lazy in a finish.”
