Russell’s winter of torment banished in one glorious afternoon
Davy Russell and Jim Culloty had much to talk about as they bid their less than fond farewells to 2013 at the latter’s yard 10 weeks ago.
The only problem was that the future didn’t look all that bright either.
Culloty was halfway through a drought that would last eight months and only 24 hours had passed since Russell sat down for tea with Michael O’Leary and had the retained rider position at Gigginstown Stud whisked away.
A reigning champion jump jockey, sacked.
No-one needed to read the next chapter to know what was coming. Bryan Cooper had assumed his saddle at Cheltenham last March when Russell succumbed to a punctured lung and was swiftly announced as his successor.
Russell turned to an old friend.
He had known the Kerry-born Culloty ever since he was “a chap” and his first instinct was to seek out his blunt tongue rather than a more soothing voice.
Culloty told the teetotaller to go out and get drunk, if only so he could get a night’s sleep.
He didn’t. Within days he was riding out instead.
There were no tantrums. Nothing stronger than the word “shock” emanated from his mouth in public afterbeing cut loose so unceremoniously, even when 2014 dragged on and his fortunes continued to scrape along the floor. Until yesterday, it looked like Cheltenham would be merely another week to forget in a diary stacked with them. Then the fates took their foot from his throat and allowed this gifted jockey the opportunity to enjoy himself again.
Victory aboard Gordon Elliott’s Tiger Roll in the opening JCB Triumph Hurdle was a sign that his luck was changing. A Gigginstown horse, the ride had been Cooper’s until the youngster suffered that horrific fall and leg break on Wednesday.
The intertwining Russell-Cooper narrative filtered through it all seamlessly — all the more so when he claimed the Festival closer on Gigginstown’s Savello — but they were mere bookends to a dramatic success on Culloty’s Lord Windermere in the Gold Cup.
A winter of torment, banished in one glorious Gloucestershire afternoon.
“Regardless of the season that I am after having or the things that have happened to me …” he began after landing the big one. “… we have gone two or three days here and I have had three falls. I have rode very poorly on some occasions with little confidence.
“Then, all of a sudden, I ride a nice horse in the first, he wins, and I ride a very good horse in the Gold Cup and he wins so, regardless of what happened, it’s easy for me to say now but I have said it along: that’s life. You shut your mouth and you move on.”
It was a day that made the Gigginstown decision to sever ties with him look as ill-advised as Leeds United’s willingness to let Eric Cantona transfer cross the Pennines or Boston’s failure to keep Babe Ruth from the mitts of the Yankees.
Russell could have taken the high road but he didn’t.
He did speak about being able to relax on Lord Windermere in the Gold Cup because he was riding for people who “understood” but it was a line delivered devoid of malice or reference to others.
Asked after the opening win if it was strange to ride a winner for his old bosses again, he delivered a response to the effect that he didn’t care whose colours he won in but he was quick with a clarification when asked jokingly if he was now the stud’s second jockey.
“I’m second nothing,” he said. “I’m my own man now.”
It was a day of days that insisted on being framed by all the bad ones.
Culloty joked after the Gold Cup success that Russell was “getting the sack” halfway round as he insisted on holding the eventual winner back towards the tail.
“The whole way round I felt he was going to stay,” said Russell.
“That’s why I kept poking away and poking away and if I’d finished second I may have got a kick up the arse but, at the same time, I didn’t. You take those liberties. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred they don’t work out.
“It was once in a hundred. I’m just lucky it happened at Cheltenham. From the top of the hill I always felt I had a squeak.
“Even throughout the race. Turning around at the back the very first time I’m actually contemplating ‘am I going to pull up and wait for Punchestown?”
In the end, the wait lasted only as long as it took the stewards to conclude their enquiry into any possible interference down the stretch.
It must have felt like an eternity, but then what was an extra few minutes after all they had been through?
