Jordan Gainford steers Hewick to Galway Plate success despite wayward loose horse

Rising star Jordan Gainford guided Hewick to a dramatic success in Wednesday’s Tote Galway Plate and proved adept at understatement into the bargain.

Having repelled his opposition, the greatest obstacle to the ‘Shark’ Hanlon trained 16-1 winner turned out to be the loose Exelerator Express who’d been brought down earlier in an incident-packed race.

The wayward loose horse veered right up the hill, carrying Hewick to the far rail, a move that gave a glimpse of hope to the pursuing pair of Darasso and 9-2 favourite El Barra.

It briefly looked like defeat would get plucked from the jaws of victory as the unwitting cross-channel raider continued his contrary passage with Gainford largely helpless to stop him.

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However, a horse that had won a major three-and-a-half mile handicap at Sandown in April wasn’t going to want for either stamina or grit and at the line Hewick still had half a length in hand.

“It wasn’t ideal!” said a masterly low-key Gainford after securing another big-race success. “When you cross the line in front you can look back at those things and thankfully it didn’t go the wrong way.”

It’s only three since the 21-year-old Wexford jockey’s first winner and with Gordon Elliott’s crucial support he rode out his claim in February, by which time a first Cheltenham festival success was already in the bag courtesy of The Shunter.

Elliott released Gainford to maintain his partnership with Hewick, whose trainer had declared weeks ago it would take a fair one to beat him.

Hanlon’s claim to fame may be as the man that kick-started Rachael Blackmore’s career but his ability to win top races with cheap buys is startling.

His sole Grade One winner Skyace cost €600 out of Willie Mullins’s yard and Hewick’s purchase as a two-year-old was comparatively extravagant at €850. Wednesday’s success took Hewick’s career earnings to over €300,000.

“It was a long final furlong, nearly as long as it takes me to get home!” beamed Hanlon afterwards. “It’s great to win a race like this, for the team at home, it’s so important, and Jordan gave him a super, super ride.”

Pre-race concerns about Hewick lacking the pace for a race almost a mile shorter than his previous career best proved unfounded and immediately prompted speculation of a tilt at the Aintree National in 2023.

Hanlon’s immediate ‘National’ priority though is September’s Kerry version in Listowel, a race he won in 2011 with Alfa Beat.

“Our game has gone very tough with the price of feed and everything and we are a small yard. It is getting harder every day and to win this is unreal.

“My mother and father haven’t been racing for three years and are here. I am coming here all my life. This and the Kerry National, I have won both and we’ll head back to Kerry with him now,” he said.

“He came from the sales in Goresbridge for €850. I met this horse coming in the back gate with a lovely walk and Paddy Mullins said to me years ago ‘if a horse can’t walk, he can’t run’.

“I went there to buy another horse and I live only five minutes from the sales company, so went home for grub but was thinking about him and went back down and bought him,” he added.

Willie Mullins had to settle for third in the Plate but brought his tally for the week so far to four winners with a Wednesday hat-trick completed by the 28-1 outsider Dads Lad in an amateur maiden.

The most exotic winner of the evening, however, was Joseph O’Brien’s handicap winner Sir Antonio, owned by the Real Madrid and Spanish international star Álvaro Odriozola, who is currently playing in Italy with Fiorentina.

Odriozola, who has owned horses in Spain, is a regular visitor to O’Brien’s yard, initially having made contact with the Piltown trainer on social media.

“I got to know Álvaro through social media, we have been in touch for a couple of years and he had horses in Spain previously,” O’Brien explained. “He comes over when he gets some time off, stays with us for a couple of days and we’ve had horses for him for a few years.

“He enjoys seeing his horses and the stallions in Ireland, we’re good friends and he has a couple of two-years-olds in training also.”

Wednesday’s Plate attendance of 16,073 was marginally down on the corresponding 2019 figure of 16,634.