Talking Horses: Norton’s Coin upset belongs to different Cheltenham age
SIGN OF THE TIMES: The Willie Mullins-trained Billaway was one of 11 clear favourites to win at last season's Cheltenham Festival. Picture: Healy Racing
An abiding personal memory of the Cheltenham Festival is the sound of almost complete silence after the 1990 Gold Cup, as 60,000 racegoers slowly absorbed the fact that Norton’s Coin, a 100-1 shot saddled by a Welsh dairy farmer who trained a few jumpers as a hobby, had just beaten the country’s most popular chaser, Desert Orchid.
Thirty-three years later, Sirrell Griffiths’s win with Norton’s Coin remains the biggest upset of all at the Festival, not just in the Gold Cup but in any race at the meeting. And when set against some of the likely outcomes at the 2023 Festival next week — when Willie Mullins is 1-7 to be the leading trainer and the Irish range from 1-9 to 1-25 to have the most winners — there is a distinct sense that it belongs to an entirely different age, in fact, almost a different sport.
