Ruby Walsh: Why understated Paul Townend is my racing personality of the year
Paul Townend celebrates winning the Boodles Cheltenham Gold Cup Chase aboard Galopin Des Champs. Picture: Mike Egerton/PA Wire
In racing circles, when it comes to measuring success, 2023 wasn’t a lot different from 2022. Familiar names continued to dominate, but I don’t have an issue with that. I know how hard everyone has to work to get there and what they must do to stay there, but I also understand and see how hard most people work just to stay afloat. In sports, you get nothing for free. Some will just be better than others.
Therefore, I could select anyone from an army of people who achieved the most they could this year, but my brief was to pick one, and I chose a person I know well, who has achieved an enormous amount but hasn’t changed one bit since the day I met him.
In the last 12 months, he rode over 20 Grade One winners - 22 if my maths are correct - collected his sixth champion jockey’s title and was the leading rider at the Cheltenham Festival for the third time. He also bagged a first Irish Grand National but, to Paul Townend, all of that will simply have been doing his job.
Most people won’t have even heard him say that because he is a man who likes to let his riding do the talking, and that’s what it did this year on the most significant days. You could argue it always has, but you know what you have when the pressure reaches the maximum in any sport. That pressure is the pressure of expectation, the feeling of every eye watching you, expecting you to deliver. But in this sport, every participant knows that turning up doesn’t guarantee a good result - you must go about winning.
Therefore, when you walk into the parade ring on the biggest day this sport has to offer and get up on a horse, the majority expect to win. It takes bravery to ride that horse to win and not ride it not to lose. The latter is playing safe, and there is a way to do that in every sport: stick to the basics, don’t make a mistake and don’t take any chances. In theory, that’s simple, but too simple because every great sporting moment revolves around something special, a piece of skill, a bit of flair, or a decision that wasn’t scripted, rather it was an instinctive reaction.
That was Paul Townend’s Gold Cup-winning ride on Galopin Des Champs. It’s not the script, it’s just instinct, because sitting last of 13 on the inside with all the danger in front of you is not playing it safe. If you don’t win from there, whatever your gut tells you, you are carrying the can. Yet that is what he did, and he only overtook the stragglers on the first circuit before playing the cards as they were dealt to him and moved off the rail going to the 12th.
He then set a target on Harry Cobden’s back and had the patience to keep it in his sight until he straightened up for the second-last, and still had the confidence in what he was doing not to pull the trigger until precisely the right time.
It was the ride of someone without a care in the world but by someone who you know cares about everything. And it wasn’t taking a punt or rolling the dice on a long shot that needed luck because he was the 7/5 favourite. So, what was it?
Perfection doesn’t exist, but when you stand up from under the weight of expectation and deliver as he did, react like he always does with a skywards look, and move on like the person you were before you started, that’s damn close to perfection.
