Paco Boy no crying shame in Lockinge Stakes
After 40 years of training horses from Classic winners to the ones who would be too slow to catch a cold, Richard Hannon had reckoned on seeing it all.
What he had not reckoned with was the depth of feeling that comes with training a horse like Paco Boy. Picked up for the price of a second-hand Mercedes, and sometimes derided as being worth less than the price of a clapped-out Mini by those who would be hard-pressed to tell the difference in equine terms, Paco Boy shut up his detractors with a sublime display of controlled power to win to totesport Lockinge Stakes at Newbury and reduce his trainer to tears.
A winning margin of three-quarters of a length goes nowhere near to explaining the level of superiority that Paco Boy had. It may not have been a vintage field but this was an emphatic, if understated, display.
At halfway Richard Hughes was playing a waiting game at the rear of the field as Stimulation and Prince Of Dance led the nine runners in arrowhead formation. But it was Hughes who was waiting for the moment to release the lethal force that he could feel coursing through the reins.
Two furlongs out and Zacinto, who had appeared the main danger was in trouble and about to drop away. Hughes was simply waiting for the right moment to drop the brake on Paco Boy.
There was a brief moment, as Ouqba poached a lead hitting the furlong marker, when Hughes’s waiting tactics might have been the wrong call. As far as Hughes was concerned he could already call himself the winner. “The only way you’re going to get beat is going on to soon and him pulling up in front,” he said. “Because he knows he’s good and all his work at home he goes a half-length clear and he’d pull up with a selling plater beside him. I wouldn’t like to be going on a furlong-and-a-half out on him. He has that little zip to win, which is explosive and he’ll go by any horse. But he’ll never win five or six lengths.”
Paco Boy had no trouble cutting Ouqba down in the last 100 yards and the pair had pulled three-and-a-half lengths clear of Lord Shanakill in that final furlong – although the finer points of the formbook were temporarily lost on the winning trainer.
Hannon stood in the winner’s enclosure as the emotions overflowed. “It’s been a sleepless night really. This winning thing shouldn’t do this after 40 years?” he said, before his next sentence remained firmly stuck in his throat. What kept it there was a lump about the size of a golf ball but his tear-streaked face spoke with greater eloquence.
Then Hannon admitted to the nerves that had gripped him in the hours beforehand. “I was watching the television at half-past two in the morning – I didn’t know what to do with myself. And it was the same coming here,” he explained, adding of Hughes’s ice-cool ride: “He was more confident than I was.”
However, Hannon’s faith in Paco Boy has never been shaken. The five-year-old cost 30,000gns and has now won over £800,000 in prizemoney, with the prospect of breaking the £1million barrier if he can repeat his victory in the Queen Anne Stakes at Royal Ascot next month. But money alone does not explain the bond between man and horse. “He’s been such an old favourite of ours, the fact that he cost nothing and he’s come through the ranks,” Hannon said. “He’s brilliant isn’t he? The mile was never a problem, he just needs holding up. He’s got a cruising speed, he’s got gears and he’s such a lovely horse to deal with.
“I train 200 horses and it’s very rare to find one like him. That gives you a bit of pleasure in the morning to watch him. I’ve got pictures of him all over the house. He’ll be a hard horse to forget.”
Hannon has had a few horses to remember stretching back to Mon Fils who won the 2000 Guineas in 1973. Someone then asked if Paco Boy was the best Hannon had trained. By now the trademark grin was back in place. “The best I ever had was Mon Fils – when I was skint,” he said.” And I’m not far off now.”
But with a moment that no amount of money could possibly buy.
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