Sprinter Sacre

The Black Aeroplane” was one of the best twomile chasers the world has ever seen. Brilliant from the outset, it was his return to glory from a heart condition that sealed his place as a racing legend

- Kate Johnson

SPRINTER SACRE’S stellar reputation went before him. The week before National Hunt champion trainer Nicky Henderson took his superstar to Punchestown for the Grade One, twomile Champion Chase, the course’s racing manager, Richie Galway, found a man wandering the car park.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

He certainly could; the man was making a 280-mile round trip from Cork and because he wasn’t familiar with the layout of Ireland’s most prestigious course, needed to get his bearings in plenty of time. He “had to see Sprinter Sacre”.

He wasn’t the only one. Come the big day, 23 April 2013, the president of Ireland joined the record-breaking 18,607 crowd to see this spectacular horse, and everywhere Nicky went, people shook his hand to thank him for bringing the “Black Aeroplane” to Ireland. Sprinter was cheered into the parade ring, applauded as he strutted round it, and the crowds clamouring for a glimpse actually bowed the white railings as he made his way down the horse walk onto the course.

His jockey Barry Geraghty remembers: “I’d never witnessed anything like it, it was ‘Sprinter Sacre Day’, people longed to see this fella and had travelled the length and breadth of Ireland.”

For the race itself, the key for Barry was always to “keep him relaxed and controlled, and unleash that burst of speed when you need it”. Sounds simple, but jockeys usually need plans B and C and sure enough: “Down the back straight, he was on springs, and at the fourth-last he hit a patch of heavy ground and it sucked the life out of him.”