Sporting Bygones: When Beaumont’s Cheltenham hero Jodami brought the Gold Cup back home to Yorkshire

Now Nicky Henderson’s Bobs Worth, the ante-post favourite for Friday’s feature, heads to Cheltenham after just one run this season – the Hennessy – in which he demolished a high-quality field off a very competitive handicap mark. A winner of the RSA Chase last season, the form remains rock solid and the Lambourn trainer is a master of fine-tuning his string on the gallops.

But Mark Dwyer, who partnered Jodami to victory, believes that Brandsby trainer Peter Beaumont never received sufficient credit because he was one of National Hunt racing’s more unfashionable names.

“He was quite a big horse and it would take nearly a season to get him to his peak,” said Dwyer, who runs a livery yard near Malton.

“Mr Beaumont did a great job just to get the horse in peak condition on the day in question. I only started riding Jodami that season; we were second at Haydock and then disappointed to finish second to Ferdy Murphy’s Sibton Abbey in the Hennessy off a light weight.

“We won at Newbury and Haydock in January, but it was when he won the Grade One Irish Hennessy at Leopardstown in February – Ireland’s Gold Cup – that we started to believe we had a Cheltenham horse.”

The fact that Dwyer had won the 1985 Gold Cup for Malton’s Jimmy Fitzgerald on Forgive ‘N’ Forget gave the jockey the confidence not to strike for home too early.

Even though the elite 15-runner field included Jenny Pitman’s Garrison Savannah and the Toby Balding-trained Cool Ground, the champions from the previous two years, the heavily-backed favourite was The Fellow.

Denied by an Adrian Maguire-ridden Cool Ground in a three-way photo-finish 12 months previously, he was settled in the rear early on by Adam Kondrat, whose jockeyship was regularly the subject of, at times, merciless criticism.

It was Richard Dunwoody who made much of the running on Rushing Wild – The Fellow blundered at the sixth and seventh – but Jodami was still travelling well when the pacesetter upped the tempo on the second circuit.

Coming down the hill before the turn for home, Jodami – an 8-1 chance – loomed large as Rushing Wild accelerated towards the final three fences.

“He travelled very well and took it up going to the last,” said Dwyer. “The rest is history, as they say. Forgive ‘N’ Forget was the quicker horse, but Jodami just needed time to get going. He was an old-fashioned chasing type you don’t see much of these days.”

A stalwart of Yorkshire farming and point-to-point racing, and now 78 and recovering from a recent stroke, Beaumont had bought the horse privately in Ireland for owner John Yeadon, who turned down many offers – including one deal reputedly worth £150,000 – for Jodami.

In Jodami’s early career, he had been regularly ridden by Beaumont’s daughter, Anthea, before Dwyer took over the riding reins in the 1992-93 season when the gelding, who lived to the age of 23, started to confirm his rich promise.

“There was terrfic excitement,” said Beaumont with pride. “The biggest struggle was getting off the owners’ and trainers’ stand with the crush and people congratulating me.

“We expected a very good run because he had won the Irish Hennessy the previous month. Mark had won the race before so we didn’t bother with instructions.

“He just slipped on the last bend and lost a shoe, but he still managed to win. I saw him slip, but I didn’t realise how disastrous that it could have been.”

The following season saw the champion fall in Wetherby’s Charlie Hall Chase – Barton Bank was the winner – before beating Mary Reveley’s Cab On Target in the Edward Hanmer at Haydock, now the Betfair Chase.

Two third-place finishes enabled Jodami to successfully defend the Irish Hennessy before a final fence mistake handed the 1994 Gold Cup to The Fellow.

The next season saw Jodami finish fifth at Cheltenham to Master Oats and the 18th – and final – win of his 39-race career came at his beloved Haydock in January, 1997 when he won the Peter Marsh Chase by a neck.

Retirement beckoned after the Irish Hennessy when he finished second to Danoli. As for this year’s race, Peter Beaumont offers this assessment: “I don’t think there is anything better than Bobs Worth, but it would be a wonderful fillip for the North if Cape Tribulation could win for Malcolm Jefferson.”