INTERVIEW PADDY BRENNAN:THEY MAKE an unlikely pair, the intense Galway jockey and the laid-back Gloucestershire trainer, but together Paddy Brennan and Nigel Twiston-Davies will try to gatecrash today's Cheltenham Gold Cup party.
What has been billed all season as a racing "Thrilla in Manila" between the stable-companions Kauto Star and Denman, steeplechasing's blue riband will no doubt be presented this afternoon as a mano-a-mano face-off.
It makes for snappy headlines but ignores the fact horses racing over fences is often far from so straight-forward. There was a time when such presumption might have got Paddy Brennan extremely hot under the collar. This afternoon he pitches for Gold Cup glory on Imperial Commander, a failure in the King George, but a proven Cheltenham performer who memorably lost to Kauto Star by just a nose at Haydock in November. Ignoring Imperial Commander's credentials could once have had the 28-year-old jockey flinging a saddle across the weighroom.
The former hurler from Ardrahan, half-way between Gort and Clarinbridge, is still famously focused but where once his habit was to tell it as it is, now he believes: "I've learned the best thing is to say nothing and then it's easily mended. Before I'd have said the wrong thing and offended people." It's just one example of the new maturity in a jockey who is now one of the most highly-regarded in Britain while still retaining the intense drive.
Brennan's route to the top has not been the fast-track of a precocious talent. Years at the coalface of Jim Bolger's yard ended when he moved to the then emerging force of Paul Nicholls only for that not to work out.
It was three years working for Philip Hobbs that set the Irishman on his way and a conditional championship in 2004-2005 helped him secure the coveted role as Graham Wylie's number-one rider. But a less than warm relationship with Wylie's trainer Howard Johnson meant that lasted just a year despite a World Hurdle victory for Inglis Drever in 2007.
Brennan remembers the split as "hurtful" but it led to a new association with Twiston-Davies which is now in its third season and has taken both men to new levels in terms of quantity of winners. They are already well past the €1.2 million mark in prize money this season. In Imperial Commander, they feel they have the material in terms of quality too. "He's four out of five over fences at Cheltenham and he was very wrong the only time he was beaten here," said Twiston-Davies. "Three out at Haydock he had Kauto beat but he made a mistake there that turned it into a battle. He will have improved from that. He's an awful lot fitter now, really lean, mean and keen."
Fancying his chances is nothing new for the ex-farmer whose most noteworthy racing moments to date have come with a pair of Grand National victories in Liverpool. After the second of them, with Bindaree in 2002, Twiston-Davies considered quitting the job, admitting he'd stopped enjoying it.
Thankfully for Brennan he changed his mind.
The Irishman relishes his boss's positive attitude which leads to a belief that every one of their runners has a real shout. It almost came true on Tuesday as Khyber Kim found only Binocular too good in the Champion Hurdle. The fact that both trainer and jockey fancy their chances today might be worth keeping in mind.
