Blue blood racer

A half a century ago, a swashbuckling playboy, the 17th Marquis de Portago, rode Garde Toi to third in the Cheltenham Gold Cup. But that was only one chapter in a remarkable sporting life. Simon Lewis reports.

HE won't know it of course, but when Innox goes into the fray at the Cheltenham Festival next Tuesday, the eight-year-old gelding will reawaken the curious and swashbuckling sporting history of a Spanish aristocratic family.

The Francois Doumen-trained horse is the sole French challenger going to post in Tuesday afternoon's Kim Muir Amateur Riders Steeplechase, introduced to the National Hunt Festival in 1946 in honour of a young cavalry officer who lost his life in the early years of the Second World War.