No-hopers snatch historic wins at Ascot

It can’t happen, but it did. The gates to the highest grade of Flat race are locked to rank outsiders, or rags, as they’re known in the trade. Ascot’s Champions Day is meant to be horse racing’s climax, with £4.35m in prize-money. The dreamers and schemers are here to be also-rans, while potentates motor home with the trophies and the dough.

But out of obscurity galloped Powerful Glory at 200-1 in the British Champions Sprint – then Cicero’s Gift at 100-1 in the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes, where champion milers are meant to be crowned. Powerful Glory, who was a good horse last year, had beaten one rival home in two previous outings this season, while Cicero’s Gift had recently been beaten at Pontefract, which is no Ascot.

In a season of shocks, Powerful Glory was the longest-priced winner of a European Group 1 race, beating a record set only three months ago, by the 150-1 chance Qirat in Goodwood’s Sussex Stakes. With the romance of these outrageous wins comes mortified silence in the betting ring, because almost no-one backs them. The world record belongs to Lunar Fox, a 300-1 winner of the 2021 Australian Guineas at Flemington, in Melbourne.

But at least one clairvoyant saw Powerful Glory coming. The Sheffield Star’s tipster, Fortunatus, made it their nap (tip of the day) – the kind of triumph racing tipsters dine out on for life. The pain felt by punters is offset by the exultation of bookmakers seeing all the fancied horses go down and the money stay in the satchel.

Maybe it was the champion jockey Oisin Murphy’s recent musings on never losing hope that inspired the most startling big race double seen on a British racecourse.

He said he would avoid eye contact with his fellow jockeys as he walked through a guard of honour to be crowned champion jockey for a fifth time.

His feelings of guilt would be based, he said, on how lucky he feels to be riding the best horses. Many will have wondered whether his embarrassment stemmed instead from crashing his car into a tree in April with a female passenger, and with nearly twice the limit for alcohol in his system. Murphy was fined £70,000 and banned for driving for 20 months.

Here he took the same walk through the Ascot guard of honour as 12 months ago. Thus the focus switched from the big equine winners (Trawlerman in the Long Distance Cup and Calandagan in the Champion Stakes were easier to predict) to a two-legged protagonist – a serial offender who hasn’t been dropped by any of the powerful people he rides for, despite his rap sheet.

Some in racing have stood by him out of simply loyalty or compassion. But a deep lore runs through racing at this level. The top riders are treated differently because they make the difference between winning and losing. With Murphy or Ryan Moore on board, you minimise the possibility of pilot error.

Qatar Racing are his lead employer and their racing manager Dave Redvers says: “He is family, as we have been working together as friends and colleagues for the best part of a dozen years. You do not just drop friendships or responsibilities to a friend, particularly someone like him ...”

Talented in the saddle, and loquacious when tidying up after the many messes he has created, Murphy served a three-month ban for a positive cocaine test in 2020. In December 2021 his jockey’s licence was suspended for 14 months for breaching Covid protocols and misleading British Horseracing Authority officials, as well as two failed breath tests.

A run of meaty interviews has cast him as a man fighting temptation and work stress – rather than as a hedonist, or recidivist.

Last year, at the 2024 Champions Day, his uncle Jim Culloty, a former jump jockey, called him “a kind of flawed genius.” That crown weighs heavily in all sports. But when he’s not getting in trouble, Murphy is an outstanding jockey. You won’t see him on many 100-1 or 200-1 shots.

Photograph by Steve Patson/PA Wire