Honouring a Festival legend
RUBY Trophy at the 2020 meeting. Walsh was an 18-year-old
The trophy for The Festival’s top rider is now named, fittingly, after its most prolific winner Ruby Walsh, says Alan Sweetman RUBY
NO JOCKEY has had a more profound impact on The Festival TM presented by Magners than Ruby Walsh, leading rider at 11 editions between 2004 and 2017, partnering a record seven winners on two occasions. Following his retirement last May, seven weeks after riding his 59th and final Festival winner on Klassical Dream in the Sky Bet Supreme Novices’ Hurdle, it is fitting that his former colleagues will compete for the Ruby Walsh
amateur when riding Alexander Banquet to land the Weatherbys Champion Bumper at the 1998 Festival. Hitting the front two furlongs down and driving out the Willie Mullins-trained gelding to
hold off Cheltenham Gold Cup-winning jockey Conor O’Dwyer on Joe Mac, the
youngster already showed many of the qualities that would inform his career: composure on the big
34 The Festival March 2020
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