The Guinness Village is, to Cheltenham racegoers, something of a field of dreams. It sits on the side of the track, at the foot of Prestbury Park’s infamous hill, the topography urging punters toward its concrete embrace, like snooker balls destined for a wonky table’s corner pocket.
As a folk band plays, winners and losers are as one, those waving the white hanky of another losing slip wearing the same smiles as those charged to victory by the magic of that dark liquid luck. It was here — perhaps seeking a bit of the latter — that Nico De Boinville found himself on the Friday afternoon of last year’s Festival.
As colleagues rode out the final races of the meeting, the No1 jockey to Nicky Henderson, the most successful British trainer in Cheltenham history, had been made a redundant force, pint instead of rein in hand at the end of a week that had been, by his own reckoning, a “no-show” from the start.
“We let a few horses run on the first day and it was pointless,” says Henderson, who had gone to Cheltenham knowing his runners were underperforming badly and praying, rather than expecting, that they would suddenly come right. “You just lose confidence and heart.”
In most cases, there was no specific physical issue or ailment, but rather some hidden, underlying factor that meant hardly any of the yard’s horses were showing their true form.
Of six to run on the opening day, five were pulled up before the finish. De Boinville attempts to explain: “It’s like driving along the motorway at 70mph and suddenly the car just goes, ‘Zzzzzzzz’. Then you’re crawling along at 50mph. Then, eventually, it just stops — and you’re in the lay-by.”
On their actual drives home that night, De Boinville and Henderson had a long conversation about their prospects for the rest of the week.
Steadily over the coming days, the bulk of their runners were withdrawn, including leading chances in the Triumph Hurdle, Champion Chase and Gold Cup.
“Pretty sickening” is how De Boinville describes watching races he might have won. “Brutal,” Henderson adds. “Not much fun at all. If you haven’t got horses good enough to go to Cheltenham then that’s one thing. But when you’ve got them and can’t run them, that’s double-hard.”
It would have been for any yard, never mind one which, like Seven Barrows, gears its year around one week. “If you have a good or bad Cheltenham, it defines how your season’s been,” De Boinville says.
For the first time since 2008, Henderson finished without a single winner.
Coming out fighting
The criticism that followed, though, was not of Henderson’s training performance but of his approach.
Some felt that, with no illness or injury identified in most of his horses, the 74-year-old should have continued to roll the dice, and the decision not to added to the perception of Henderson as an unduly cautious campaigner, which had been building over the previous year or two.
“I don’t see it,” says De Boinville. “We run horses in the right races in the right conditions and if things don’t add up, we do the right thing. For us the horse comes first.”
Does he sense that Henderson is ever stung by the debate? De Boinville remembers a fractious interview at Sandown a few years back when the broadcaster Lydia Hislop and Henderson “went at it” after the great Altior had been pulled out of the Tingle Creek.
It’s like driving along the motorway at 70mph and suddenly the car just goes, ‘Zzzzzzzz’.
“I said to the boss that it was great TV. Whether he enjoyed doing it at the time? I don’t think so.”
Mention of last year’s post-Cheltenham criticism confirms as much. Henderson is clearly still rankled by the backlash, which he says came from “uninformed people who do not understand”.
“[They’re] saying: ‘You never run them. Why doesn’t he run them?’. The reason you don’t run is because if it’s not going to run properly, what’s the point? We know when it’s right and when it’s wrong. I don’t know why they think I didn’t run them. I didn’t do it for my own amusement.”
Henderson and De Boinville insist their attitude towards this season has not been shaped by the last, but there is no doubt that they have come out swinging.
“We didn’t have that bad a season — we just didn’t show up at the Festival,” De Boinville explains. “We’re hoping we can put that right this year.”
Over Christmas at Kempton, they landed two mighty blows when Sir Gino and Constitution Hill, the unbeaten hurdler who is the stable’s star, saw off the raiding Willie Mullins pair of Ballyburn and Lossiemouth in the kind of Anglo-Irish clashes seldom seen so early in the campaign.
Henderson regards those victories for two horses who sat out Cheltenham as vindication, not to mention a morale-boosting strike after Mullins claimed trainers’ titles on both sides of the Irish Sea last season, something which “didn’t reflect brilliantly on English racing”.
De Boinville, meanwhile, livened up Boxing Day with his punchy riposte to Paddy Brennan, telling the former jockey — who had rubbished Constitution Hill’s chance of beating Lossiemouth — to “shove that where the sun don’t shine”.
“It’s all good fun really,” he smiles now. “Ultimately, we’re here to entertain and be entertained.”
When the pressure’s on
Henderson and De Boinville’s partnership will feature in a second series of Champions: Full Gallop, the Drive To Survive-style documentary that returns on ITV in the autumn.
They first teamed up 16 years ago, when De Boinville arrived at Seven Barrows as a university dropout to become a work rider. He was a “beautiful horseman” on Henderson’s first impression, but one who grew frustrated at a lack of opportunity on the racetrack.
“It is very difficult to get these younger boys on the ladder,” Henderson explains. “They all go through periods of thinking it isn’t going to work. They’re all hungry to get out there. But owners want the top jockeys, not unheard of claimers.”
Both recall — at least partially — a Sunday-morning summit, when De Boinville reached the end of his tether and handed in his notice with intentions to move to France (“I don’t remember the French bit!” Henderson laughs). Instead, he was convinced to stay and rode a valuable winner in Ascot’s Ladbroke Hurdle the following weekend.
These days, it is difficult to imagine De Boinville getting overly stressed about anything, his reputation built on delivering with icy conviction when riding the most high-profile horses on the days that count.
“Very little flusters him,” Henderson says. “Pressure doesn’t get to him. You can see plenty of reasons why jockeys would get nervous before those big days. I do!”
There are 28 races at the Cheltenham Festival but the weighting of De Boinville’s winning record towards the best of them is remarkable. Of his 16 Festival victories, only two have come outside Grade 1s.
“It’s being comfortable in an uncomfortable position,” he says. “You have to accept that it’s not just any other ride. It’s massively important to everyone and you have to really step up.”
The death last month of Festival-winning jockey Michael O’Sullivan, killed at the age of 24 after a horrific fall at Thurles, has also brought fresh perspective to the weighing room.
“Let’s face it, these are the days of our lives really,” De Boinville says. “You look at what’s happened to Michael and you really do have to enjoy it. You wouldn’t do it unless you wanted to.”
Out of action for a full year, Constitution Hill has returned this season with two victories from two but the day one feature will answer questions as to whether he retains the ability of his peak.
De Boinville says there is “no question” he is as good as ever. Henderson wonders if he may be “even better” still.
You are unlikely, though, to draw the same bullishness from the trainer’s typically nervous expression come four o’clock on Tuesday afternoon.
“There are two people who won’t be worried on the day,” he admits. “One will be Constitution Hill — and the other will be Nico.”
