Image © Healy Racing
Sine Nomine became the fourth British-trained winner of the St. James’s Place Festival Challenge Cup Hunter Chase from the last six renewals as she overhauled the chief Irish hope Its On The Line in the dying strides.
Sine Nomine became the fourth British-trained winner of the St. James’s Place Festival Challenge Cup Hunter Chase from the last six renewals as she overhauled the chief Irish hope Its On The Line in the dying strides.
Emmet Mullins’ charge had been sent off as a well-backed 11/8 favourite for the 3m 2f contest that he had finished second in 12 months earlier, and he jumped off to the fore as the keen-going Ferns Lock took the field along under Barry O’Neill.
That Thurles winner led the field to the home bend, however once tackled around the home bend, the writing was on the wall for him as the trio of Time Leader, Its On The Line and the eventual winner winner Sine Nomine went on.
Whilst it was the Aintree Foxhunters fifth Time Leader that held the slender advantage over the final fence, Derek O’Connor struck the front on the run-in in his quest to win all three amateur rider races at the festival in the on year.
However that bid was thwarted inside the final 150 yards when the 8/1 shot came through under John Dawson to claim a three-quarter-length victory.
The 2022 winner Billaway was just run out of the fourth position after a serious blunder at the last, with the remaining Irish challengers, Ramillies, Samcro and the aforementioned Ferns Lock, all pulling-up.
The victory was particularly special for winning trainer Fiona Needham, the long-serving Clerk of the Course at Catterick, as she had been victorious in the saddle 22 years earlier, aboard her father Robert Tate’s Last Option.
Fiona Needham said: “That’s a dream come true, and what a ride he gave her. My only instruction was to save a bit for up the hill but I couldn’t have been that calm. I thought we were beaten going to the last, but boy did she pick up. She’s a star.
"I was screaming and being very embarrassing I’m afraid. I thought if she was third she’d have run a very good race, and that was where I thought she was going to finish, but then she picked up.
“I said two years ago that this what I wanted to do and he said ‘you are absolutely mad, we should be going for mares’ races’, but I said ‘no, no, this is the dream and then we can go back to reality when we come back with our tails between our legs’ and it’s paid off.
“You don’t get highs like this at Catterick!
“Last Option won and the following year and was third, and since then I’ve just had three or four runners at the hunter chase meeting. None at the Festival.”
%uD83C%uDFC6 Cracking race
— Racing TV (@RacingTV) March 15, 2024
Sine Nomine thunders up the Cheltenham hill to land the Hunters' Chase for Mr. John Dawson & Fiona Needham! The pride of Yorkshire! pic.twitter.com/vzB02S2TBy
Winning jockey John Dawson said: John Dawson: “We’ve always tended to ride her that way and she seems to enjoy that. I was sort of hoping the race would pan out in her favour and that we could get a lovely toe into it, and it just worked out. She’s always finished off quite well,and I thought, if she’s travelling coming down the hill, I think she’ll still be galloping at the top of it.
“To be honest, I thought she wasn’t even going to see the last fence if we stayed where we were, and it was one of those - I was never going to see anything down the inside, so I thought, pull out and hope for the best. I thought I was beat at that point, but, credit to her, she stuck her neck out and galloped up the hill.
“She was almost a bit [too] brave down the back at one or two [fences]; she kept grabbing and I hoped the next one would just get her into the boards a bit, but she kept coming and kept coming, and I thought she was getting a bit too brave, but she was travelling nicely at the top of the hill and popped her way up the hill. It’s just a dream.
“I just never thought for a moment we’d be mixing it here with these top jockeys - watching Derek O’Connor yesterday; top, top riders, and to have our name on that trophy is something.
“I’m getting on a bit now, riding, I’ve been round the block a bit, and I’ve been down here a few times on long, long shots, and you sort of know your fate before you come here, but with her, I genuinely didn’t know how good she was, and today she’s proved that. But it’s a nice way of doing it with her, she’s come through point-to-points - I think I have ridden her in every race she’s run in, from her very first start, and she’s always given me that little bit of something else.
