It's alright for Gino

A "buzzing" jockey triumphs in the Coral Gold Cup and an Olympic gold medallist finds herself in the winner's enclosure

- JENNIFER DONALD

Newbury Racecourse, Berks

ARKLE, One Man, Denman, Many Clouds… the roll of honour for Newbury’s Coral Gold Cup is as illustrious as it comes and the £250,000 3m2f handicap is a season highlight for racing fans.

But jockey Gavin Sheehan’s reaction to winning this year’s race on the Jamie Snowdentrained Datsalrightgino revealed just what it means to win that trophy.

“I’m absolutely buzzing. This means the world, this is massive,” expressed Sheehan, who recently hit a milestone 700 career wins. “These big races are what it’s all about.”

Lambourn-based Snowden, previously assistant to Nicky Henderson, has been training for 15 years and the Folly House stables are enjoying a rich vein of form.

“These big handicaps are very hard to win and fair play to the whole team,” said the trainer. “This horse is not short of speed and we’ve campaigned him mainly over two miles since last season. Gavin said, ‘I can’t wait to go up to three miles’ and he was right.”

Datsalrightgino, owned by Hew and Jane Glyn Davies, was one of last season’s star novice chasers and was led in by Folly House yardman Tim Griffiths (see box, below).