Former football manager’s horse wins Kempton thriller
Cheltenham Gold Cup up next for the gutsy winner
“Today, we’ve gone into the Champions League,” Harry Redknapp, the owner of The Jukebox Man, said after his horse had fought back to win an extraordinary three-way photo-finish in the King George VI Chase here on Friday. “We got into the Premier League, which was fantastic, but today we were taking on the Real Madrids and Barcelonas and he proved he can compete with them and win against them, which was an amazing feeling.”
It was, in truth, simply an amazing race from start to finish, with one of the most enthralling passages of action from the home turn to the line that anyone here could recall in a Grade One steeplechase. Kempton is unloved by the Jockey Club, its owners, which has signed over an option to developers that would see it bulldozed for housing, but its speed-favouring, right-handed track is something special and unique in British jumping and here it produced an all-time classic for a sell-out crowd of 17,000 spectators.
Eight horses set off for what was, on paper at least, the best renewal of this famous race for at least a decade, and after Il Est Francais had ensured a decent gallop through the first two-and-a-half miles, with scarcely the hint of a mistake from any of his rivals, all eight were still within three lengths of each other at the final turn.
