Lee celebrates with Ballyalton after victory in the Close Brothers Novices’ Handicap Chase
trainer) Derek Shaw, a horse called In The Arena,” he says ruefully. “Unfortunately he never even won a race, so it was a fairly unsuccessful start, but it did give me a flavour of being an owner. “I went on to have a few good ones with Karl Burke, and then we moved on to Mick Easterby, and had a few good ones with him. Hoof It did really well, he won the Stewards’ Cup at Goodwood, the consolation race, and some good handicaps at places “During Festival week the atmosphere is so incredible and you get so many interesting people there ... it’s great to see such quality races”
like Doncaster and York, and we also had Hoofalong, who won the Scottish Sprint Cup at Musselburgh.” Westwood is diplomatic when asked if he prefers the Flat or the Jumps. “I’d say a bit of both,” he replies. “One of the better horses I had was a horse called Grande Jete, who started off in South Africa and ran in some of the best Flat races over there. Then we took him to Dubai, where he ran OK, and we decided to bring him over to England and we eventually sent him jumping with Nicky Henderson. “The first time he went hurdling he ran at Bangor one December. I went all the way over there to watch him and he got beaten by a horse who was a real hotshot called Garde Champetre, who ended up being bought by JP McManus and won all the cross-country races at Cheltenham. “I remember Mick Fitzgerald riding Grande Jete for me. They were going up the back straight and the horse started slowing down. When he came back in, I said to Mick, ‘what was wrong with it up the back straight?’ and he replied, ‘well, it didn’t like running into the wind and the rain’.
10 Kalendar
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