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Sunday, February 05, 2006

My vote is for Prescott (Sir Mark, not John)

I've been enjoying reading The Racing Post’s 100 Greatest Training Feats.
But I do feel there has been one glaring omission. How on earth was Sir Mark Prescott left out? Prescott has worked the oracle with many horses down the years but in my opinion deserved inclusion for one feat in particular: training Alborada to win back-to-back Champion Stakes in 1998/9. There seemed, to use jockey George Duffield’s words ‘not a cat-in-hell’s chance’ of Alborada following up her win for most of the 1999 season- as a succession of injuries and setbacks meant she only had to go to Newmarket with just one run under her belt. But she landed the race even more comfortably than she had twelve months before- and became only the second filly in the 122- year history of the race to ‘do the double’. Popularly regarded as one of the greatest trainers of moderate horses the sport has seen, Sir Mark‘s handling of Alborada showed that when he gets the ammunition -there are few better trainers of top class animals too.

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