feature | jessica harrington
Jessica Harrington Pictures: Caroline Norris
g o l d c u p w i n n i n g t r a i n e r j e s s i c a h a r r i n g t o n r e m e m b e r s e v e r y s e c o n d o f h e r t r i u m p h a t t h e f e s t i v a l . s h e t o o k a b r e a k f r o m t r a i n i n g a t h e r c o u n t y k i l d a r e ya r d t o s h ow c o r r i e b o n d - f r e n c h a r o u n d h e r h o m e a n d c h a t a b o u t t h a t m e m o r a b l e d a y
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he taxi driver who drops me off at Jessica Harrington’s Commonstown Yard in Moone has never taken anyone there before, he tells me. But a sat nav would be obsolete; through winding, narrow country lanes with horse-high hedges, he knows exactly where to find it. Nestled in the lush, bottle-green depths of County Kildare, within view of the vertiginous peaks of Wicklow’s mountain range, Commonstown Yard has long been revered. But when Sizing John set off through these same gates in March as a mere possibility, to then return flanked by cheering crowds with a beaming Jessica holding aloft the trainer’s Cheltenham Gold Cup he had won for her just 48 hours previously, it practically became hallowed ground. I spot that very same Gold Cup on a sideboard in the kitchen, surrounded by unfurled floribunda and tea roses that Jessica has cut from her garden. Walls are covered in a succession of framed
usual things with horses. A few things went wrong so we couldn’t sell them, so we had to buy them and Johnny said you’d better take out a licence. Kate was three months old, I was 42 and that’s how it started. Life begins at 42, with a new child and a new career.” In the intervening 28 years, Jessica has become Ireland’s most successful dual-purpose trainer. Johnny, ever a popular and beloved character at Cheltenham, sadly passed away in 2014.Their daughters Emma and Kate now both work alongside Jessica. We’re having a cuppa, sitting outside soaking up the sunshine in Jessica’s glorious garden, an exuberance of roses and drifts of lavender. Sizing John is enjoying his summer break, but the memory of his Gold Cup triumph is as fresh as Kildare air. “Oh God, I remember every second with clarity, it was amazing,” she says. “We took seven horses and six horses ran – we knew they’d all run
respectably. We weren’t under that much pressure because we weren’t favourite for any race. “With Sizing John, he’d been ostensibly a two-miler before January then we went two and a half and then we won the Irish Gold Cup going three miles... so it was really just getting him there in good form. But we were coming in under the radar, there was Cue Card and Djakadam, horses that were definitely more fancied than he was. So, from that point of view that was easy for me. What settled the nerves in a big way was the fact that Supasundae won the Coral on the Wednesday. “Then when we got to the Friday,
success photographs – homage to Jessica’s racing glories and best-known winners, namely Moscow Flyer and Jezki.There are family pictures, trophies here, awards there, and a lovely oval framed photo of a smiling Johnny Harrington, Jessica’s late husband, on the main shelf. It’s a potted history of Harrington Racing in a working, family kitchen, the type of laid-back kitchen you’d hope to find in a yard that has evolved around a family home.This is where the ying and the yang, the highs and lows and the glories and woes of racing have been dissected and experienced over the years. And it feels special. There’s a charcoal nude by Jessica’s
jessica brings it home
Jessica with Gold Cup winning jockey Robbie Power who rode Sizing John to victory
everything went like clockwork. He was super in the parade and Robbie knew exactly what he was going to do during the race. He said, ‘I’ll jump off, get him settled and I’ll be middle of the course, I don’t want to get him trapped down the inside’. But after two fences there was a gap this wide down the inside so he went the inside route. He said he was thinking to himself ‘God if something goes wrong now I told Jessie I wasn’t going to be on the inside!’ “But actually he just got a dream run and the horse relaxed.The only time he picked up the bridle was the first time coming down the hill because when he’d run there before in the Supreme Novices and then The Arkle, he’d only gone the one-and-a-half- time round. “I don’t care what anyone says, horses remember, so it was no, no,
friend, horse owner and Rolling Stone, Ronnie Wood on one wall, positioned at a 90-degree angle to a plaque over the architrave that reads ‘Dull women have immaculate homes!’ It’s clear that Jessica Harrington, Gold Cup winner, the most successful female trainer in the history of Cheltenham Festival, and a septuagenarian to boot, doesn’t take herself too seriously. The daughter of an army Brigadier who won a silver medal for polo at the 1936 Olympics, Jessica was a successful eventer. She reckons she fell into her training career after marrying Johnny, a bloodstock agent, and having her fourth child. “I didn’t plan it. I was eventing, I happened to fall into it more than anything else. We were trading horses, buying them as foals and selling them on as two and three-year olds, and it was the
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