Gold Cup 1986: The Gloucestershire sky peppered by hats and newspapers thrown high in celebration

The Dawn Run story from 40 years ago reads like a novel with five chapters: horse, owner, trainer, jockeys, and drama of the race

STATUESQUE: Immortalised at Prestbury Park, the statue of Dawn Run with Jonjo O'Neill aboard greets festival goers 40 years after an epic Gold Cup success. Pic: David Fitzgerald/Sportsfile

“THE PAST,” EP Harley tells us, over and over and over again, “is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” 

As it turns out, the old wordsmith might have been selling us a little snake oil at the time.

Dust off 1986 for instance, 40 years ago now, and have a gander at the way the world was turning back then. Hurricane Charlie had saturated Ireland that year and the flooding that he caused was at least as bad as the mess Chandra left behind her recently.

There was a bombastic and militaristic Republican president occupying the White House who was out of sorts with Iran and most of Central America at the time. Russia, or, in the interest of historical precision, the Soviet Union, was bogged down and suffering massive casualties in an unwinnable war that it started by invading a nation beyond its own frontiers. No, not Ukraine, Afghanistan.

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The football World Cup was played on the north American continent and Argentina, led by an undersized generational genius, won the whole shebang, and they might very well do the same again this year. Closer to home, Kerry won the Sam Maguire, Cork captured Liam and if the bookies are correct both of these outcomes are again on the cards in 2026.

And speaking of bookies, 40 years ago this very week, thousands of Irish horse racing disciples travelled to the west of England to watch Dawn Run go in the Gold Cup with the twin hopes of making some money and to witness the birth of an enduring Cheltenham legend. The hordes hit the jackpot on both counts and historians have since confirmed that there were almost as many Irish people at Prestbury Park on March 13th, 1986, as there were in the GPO on Easter Monday 1916 – half a million or thereabouts.

When the peerless mare and beloved national treasure battled up the merciless Cheltenham hill under an energetic ride by Jonjo O’Neill to become the first horse to win both a Gold Cup and a Champion Hurdle, the scenes of mayhem and joyous madness that exploded at the track have yet to be surpassed. A rare shard of bright light in an economically dark and politically murky decade.

An argument could have been made that if Galopin Des Champs had regained his Gold Cup on Friday that his reception would have been equally loud, long, and heartfelt but since he is now a non-runner it’s an argument that remains unsettled.

The story of the Gold Cup in 1986 reads like a novel with five chapters; horse, owner, trainer, jockeys, and the drama of the race itself. Sadly, the tale ends with an epilogue of tragic proportions.

Dawn Run was foaled in Cork in 1978, a daughter of the remarkable national hunt stallion Deep Run who was champion sire 14 times in a row. She was bought as a youngster by the prominent Waterford horsewoman, Charmaine Hill for almost 6,000 punts and sent into training with yet another remarkable national hunt sire, Paddy Mullins.

Mrs Hill was a formidable woman both on and off the track who had battled for years with the authorities to allow her to race competitively against men and when they relented in 1974, she celebrated by winning a steeplechase on her own horse, Yes Man. And despite a four-month stay in hospital recovering from a later riding spill at Clonmel, she returned to the saddle at 62 to pilot Dawn Run in her first three races, including in a bumper win at Tralee.

Her slight frame belied an inner steel, and she held unfashionable beliefs for her time. Like when it came to making decisions about her racehorses, irrespective of gender, it was she that was paying the piper and she was very definitely going to call the tune.

Paddy Mullins had trained his first winner in 1952 and was champion jumps trainer for ten years and like most his high performing children, he liked to make his own decisions. He was also a taciturn man who knew how to bite his tongue and keep his own counsel, and he needed both his superpowers in the fraught spring of 1986.

The prevailing issue in the lead up to the Gold Cup was exactly who was going to ride the mare. Paddy saw no reason why his son and ‘regularish’ pilot, Tony, shouldn’t keep the ride, even if the owner was reluctant to forgive him when he unseated softly in her trial at Cheltenham in January.

Mrs Hill insisted on re-employing Jonjo O’Neill who had ridden her to success in the Champion Hurdle two years earlier. O’Neill was the pre-eminent national hunt jockey of his time. He was twice British Champion and in 1978 had smashed the long-standing record with seasonal haul of 149 winners, remarkable then, but nowadays it’s a total that wouldn’t see Sean Bowen much past Christmas.

The prevailing view in racing was that Tony had been shafted and even the congenitally cautious Jonjo later said, with uncustomary pithiness, ‘Mrs Hill had herself won a bumper at Tralee on the Dawn Run at the age of 63 and considered she knew all there was to know about riding the mare.’ But despite the public kerfuffle, there is no known evidence that Charmaine Hill ever lost a night’s sleep worrying over what people thought of her decision.

Dawn Run started 15/8 favourite on the day, just ahead of the reigning champion Forgive N’Forget. In the parade ring, Paddy Mullins, succinct as ever told his jockey that “the horse is well, you know yourself what to do.” All O’Neill believed ‘he had to do’ was get her around safe and well and she couldn’t be beaten. But safe and well for a mare given to erratic jumping was never a gimmee.

Jonjo had schooled her at Gowran in the lead up to the race, the first time that he’d sat on her in two years and said later that ‘she was desperate, couldn’t jump a twig.’ A second schooling session at Punchestown convinced him that her best chance of a clear round would be to run in an uncomplicated manner from the front, even though the field was full of rival pacemakers such as Cybrandian and Run and Skip.

Dawn Run leapt her way into the lead at the second fence, jumped well led at a serious gallop, with O’Neill’s biggest concern was not being able to take his foot off the brake to give her a breather. He thought the game might be up when passed by both Wayward Lad and Forgive ‘N Forget on the run to the last but unsurprised when she dug in to regain the lead in the shadow of the post. 

The Gloucestershire sky was peppered by hats and newspapers thrown high in celebration and Jonjo paraded Tony Mullins on his shoulders in the raucous winning enclosure. He later insisted that ‘she ran much sweeter for Tony than she did for me; they just suited each other, and it was his bad luck that he did not keep the ride.” 

This was the last time that Jonjo rode her, he retired soon afterwards to win another uphill battle, this time with cancer. Tony was back on board when she beat the Champion Chaser, Buck House in a match at Punchestown next time out and then was back offboard again, replaced by the French jockey Michel Chirol in a race at Auteuil at the end of June.

She died instantly in a fall five from home. In the past. In a foreign country.