PAISLEY PARK WOULD BE AN ACE AT POKER!

Nick Townsend talks to Emma Lavelle about her stable star

- Nick Townsend

Racehorses tend to be bestowed with all manner of human qualities – genuine, brave, courageous, honest – but few have ever been said to have been likened to a poker player. But that’s Paisley Park, Emma Lavelle’s star hurdler – at least according to her husband, assistant and ex-jockey Barry Fenton who rides out the nine-year-old daily.

You can see his point. In Ascot’s Porsche Long Walk Hurdle six days before Christmas, the stable’s standard-bearer and one of jump racing’s best-loved characters looked out of the game, a distant fifth, rounding the turn into the straight, and seemingly about to throw in his hand.

But neither he, nor his partner Aidan Coleman, blinked. With a turbocharged burst, rather more reminiscent of a 6f sprinter on the Flat than a long-distance hurdler, Paisley Park prevailed by a neck from Philip Hobbs’ Thyme Hill.

“Yes, it was exciting,” enthuses Lavelle. “But to be honest, I’d rather it wasn’t quite as exciting. He just loves winning. It’s never over with Paisley until they cross the line. It was nerve racking, but it was just fantastic.”

The racing public has taken this individual to its heart ever since his Sun Racing Stayers’ Hurdle triumph at the 2019 Cheltenham Festival when post-race, the winner’s enclosure was awash with emotion as Andrew Gemmell, his owner, a former civil servant and trade union official, and blind since birth, greeted the victor.

Lavelle adds: “At home, he’s very straightforward. He loves Andrew (Gemmell) and has his head over the door, nuzzling him. But he can be pretty fresh when you’re riding him. When he throws a few shapes, you want to be on guard.