Pressure on Waley-Cohen to go the distance on Long Run

If he backs up his horse’s King George success and wins, he will be a hero. If he loses, it will be because the jockey was not good enough – and it will be nearly impossible to silence critics like betting pundit John McCririck.

Jim Wilson can sympathise with Waley-Cohen. The last amateur rider to win the Gold Cup, partnering Peter Easterby’s Little Owl to victory 30 years ago, he believes a key difference is the scrutiny of jockeys in a 24-hour media age.

“There wasn’t the media back then,” said Wilson, speaking to the Yorkshire Post from his farm near Cheltenham. “If there was, it went over my head. I was fortunate, also, in that Little Owl was second-string to Night Nurse.

“Long Run is a young horse and he has every chance. They can call on everyone for advice – the trainer Nicky Henderson, Mick Fitzgerald and the horse guru Yogi Breisner. The trick is knowing who to listen to.”

While Waley-Cohen has a formidable record over Aintree’s National fences, Wilson believes there is no substitute for Cheltenham experience – and that is his biggest fear for Long Run and his rider.

The gutsy Little Owl was, in fact, Wilson’s sixth Festival winner – he landed three successive victories in the Coral Final aboard the perennial Willie Wumpkins.

Wilson secured the Little Owl ride when his aunt died, poignantly on the Saturday after the 1980 Festival where Wilson was the leading jockey for the entire meeting. He and his brother inherited the horse.

This family connection goes to the heart of the Long Run story. Great supporters of racing and standard-bearers for corinthian values, Waley-Cohen’s father Robert bought Long Run with a view to his son winning the Gold Cup on this magnificent French-bred chaser and helping Henderson, his longstanding friend, win a race that has eluded him.

The omens are good. With 37 winners to his name, Henderson needs just four more winners to overtake the great Fulke Walwyn as Cheltenham’s master trainer.

The leading Festival trainer on eight occasions, and favourite to win this award for a ninth time this week, Henderson learned the art of training with Fred Winter. His most successful horse was the injury-plagued See You Then, the three-time Champion Hurdle winner.

With Henderson’s Sprinter Sacre, Spirit Son and Gibb River contesting the Supreme Novices, the Festival’s opening race, before Oscar Whisky runs in the Champion Hurdle, the trainer could be in the history books prior to Long Run’s Gold Cup challenge.

This is important, even more so following the furore over Binocular’s non-appearance in the Champion Hurdle. As Wilson added: “Anything that can be done to lift the pressure on Sam will help. Distractions like Binocular won’t help him.”

Nicky henderson in his own words...

ON LONG RUN... “He must be our best chance of winning a Gold Cup by quite a long way, I suspect. It does not worry me that he has been beaten twice at Cheltenham. Nothing went right in the RSA Chase at the Festival last year for him. He is very young for the Gold Cup but that is the French way. There is nothing else we can do after winning the King George.”

ON THE FESTIVAL... “The most important thing is to try and find a winner on the first day as that takes the pressure off and then you can gradually sail through the week. The more horses you have, the more you’ve got to go wrong. I’m often envious of the Flat boys because when they finish with the Guineas they’ve got Ascot, Epsom, Chester, York and Goodwood.”