WEDNESDAY
string in a race where Mullins has the red hot favourite. With no winner on the board, a Mullins winner for another jockey would turn the screw even more. However he welcomes the change of tactics this allows. Thus far, all his rides have been fancied and banged out the gate handy and close to the pace. Ferny Hollow will have to be ridden cold. They leave the ring last. He lines up in the back row but a false start is called. Ferny Hollow skittles through the array of horses in front of him. Townend decides to line up behind the last line, rather than in it, for the next start. He nds himself stone wall last but settled and passing between the wings of the second last he is sure he has the favourite, Appreciate It, covered. His thought? Don’t panic, don’t get there too soon, take a lead. As they gallop past the furlong pole he pushes his mount to the front and they pass the post with only clear air ahead, releasing his pressure like a shaken coke can clicked open. One winner on the board, at the stroke of half time and against the run of play, makes all the dierence. Walking back in through the Weighing Room door he sees his father and assures him they’ll meet after for dinner. A dinner he was cancelling before the bumper. Suddenly there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Two days to go.
Townend arrives at the weighing room early on Wednesday, gets changed and heads to the open door behind the valets’ noisy washing machines that serves as the unocial jockeys’ area. He’s chatting with Power when the loudspeaker announces, in that quintessential British accent, “ Number three, Chacun Pour Soi, is a non-runner in the fourth race .” He blinks. Benie had got beaten and now Chacun isn’t running. His face washed with a frown and he walks back to his seat. The Big Getaway and Allaho run respectably to both nish third while Franco de Port pulls too hard and zzles away his chance. After each race, he returns to his peg and drops down into his seat beside Johnny Burke. Danny Mullins sits across from them in this alcove at the back of the Weighing Room and mischievously lobs the odd incendiary verbal grenade while Burke listens patiently, nodding and smiling, to whatever it is Townend has to get o his chest or out of his mind. By the time of the last race however, Townend wears the face of a man weighing up grim but necessary alternatives. Some people are thermostats, some are thermometers. Some register the temperature in a room, others change it. Townend has always been the latter. Tying up his helmet, he feels frustration that he is going out on the second
THE JOCKEYCLUB . CO . UK 9
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