Fergie’s Friend bowls ’em over
The 68-year-old missed out on seeing the seven-year-old land the Lexus Chase at Leopardstown in December after the race was rescheduled due to fog, but the Scotsman made the journey to Merseyside for this latest triumph.
Owned in partnership with Ged Mason, the Paul Nicholls-trained What A Friend provided Ferguson with his highest-profile jumps success when scoring under Ruby Walsh – and connections now have their sights set on the 2011 totesport Cheltenham Gold Cup.
The current champion, Imperial Commander, lacked support as he backed up just three weeks after his Cheltenham win and the 11-8 favourite raced without much zest before depositing jockey Paddy Brennan at the 14th fence.
Walsh stalked the front-running pair of Carruthers and Nacarat aboard the 5-2 chance and after seeing off the renewed challenge of the former heading to the last he cleared away for a cosy triumph.
“I am very pleased with that,” said Ferguson.
“The plan was to sit behind Nacarat as we knew he would go off at a hell of a pace and that Carruthers would do the same.
“I think Ruby is the perfect man to judge that kind of thing in a race.
“It is great to win a race as a lot of owners never do, and to win a big race is special to me and I am very pleased for Ged too.
“I hope he will go for the Gold Cup next year as it will be the right time and he should be the right age.
“We had the opportunity to run this year, but Paul rightly said that he was a young horse and to give him another year.
“Imperial Commander fell but he never looked like he was going to win to me and that is simply because he had a hard race in the Gold Cup.”
Sponsors totesport trimmed What A Friend into 16-1 from 33s for next year’s Gold Cup and Ferguson – whose team were knocked out of Europe by Bayern Munich - will be relishing the blue riband.
He added: “Racing is a great release for me from my personal situation away from my normal job. It is exciting for owners or punters and that is the great thing about racing.
“It does not compensate what happened last night but life is life and no-one died.
“You get bad results, unfairly last night. We have had great results and a bit of luck in the past.
“You can’t look upon it as a defining moment in my career. We will move on and be better for it – we are always better for a bad result.”
Nicholls said: “We set our stall out after Leopardstown at Christmas time that we would come here and miss the Gold Cup.
“There was no point running him in the Gold Cup this year and in a way this was his Gold Cup.
“He is only a seven-year-old and has just had three runs this year. He has finished second in the Hennessy and won two Grade Ones and the best is yet to come.
“If he goes the right way he is there in the mix and I suppose we will start him off at Haydock in November.
“Kauto Star and Denman will still be around next year and Imperial Commander is the Gold Cup winner. They are all great horses but the young ones are coming through and I hope he is one of them.”
He added of his relationship with Ferguson: “We had a drink after the game last night and I think he felt like I did after the Gold Cup.”
Imperial Commander never looked like threatening with several slow jumps pushing him back through the field before the mistake that ended his race.
Trainer Nigel Twiston-Davies said: “The horse is fine – he didn’t jump very well and if you don’t jump you don’t win.
“He made an early mistake and his jumping fell apart so we’ll send him off for a nice long break now.”
