In the next in his series of iconic Cheltenham Festival moments, John Ingles looks back to when Norton's Coin pulled off one of the greatest Festival upsets.
Thanks to its long distance, big, unique fences, huge field and handicap format, the Grand National is not only prone to falling to an outsider but shocks are part of the race’s folklore. As 50/1 winner Noble Yeats proved last year, the Grand National’s capacity to throw up long-priced winners very much remains, even if it doesn’t provide the same test as it did when Foinavon emerged from the mayhem at the 23rd fence back in 1967.
But chasing’s other iconic race, the Cheltenham Gold Cup, is a very different contest. Run at level weights and contested by horses whose merits are, by and large, fairly well established, it is not a race for outsiders. This century, for example, only two winners, Lord Windermere (20/1 in 2014) and Al Boum Photo (12/1 in 2019) have started at double-figure odds, which makes Norton’s Coin’s victory at 100/1 in 1990 all the more extraordinary.
Although it wasn’t much more than 30 years ago, Norton’s Coin’s unlikely win – a cheaply-bred horse trained by a permit-holding dairy farmer with a three-horse string – seems to belong to a very different era.
If it’s hard to imagine a Gold Cup winner emerging from a similar background these days, conditions for the 1990 Gold Cup have also become a thing of the past thanks to watering to provide safe ground. The going was exceptionally quick for the 1990 Cheltenham Festival, with Timeform calling it ‘good to firm’ on the opening day and ‘firm’ for the rest of the meeting. As a result, there were record times set in no fewer than ten of the 18 races, including the Gold Cup which was run at a blistering gallop. Norton’s Coin took more than four seconds off the record Dawn Run had set four years earlier, with the first six home in the Gold Cup all beating the previous best time.
Top jumpers can come from all sorts of backgrounds but Norton’s Coin, the product of a mating arranged by his owner-trainer Sirrell Griffiths who farmed near Carmarthen, had very little to recommend him on paper. His sire, the fairly useful Flat handicapper Mount Cassino, mostly covered ponies and cobs during a fairly short stud career while Norton’s Coin was the only foal produced by his unraced and cheaply-bought dam.
Even so, he won four point-to-points in his early days, as well as a hunter chase at Chepstow, but his form really began to take off in the spring of 1989 with the assistance of Richard Dunwoody in the saddle. The partnership’s three wins included the Silver Trophy Chase at Cheltenham’s April meeting which was itself something of a surprise at odds of 20/1 against the likes of Beau Ranger, Panto Prince and Golden Freeze.
That wasn’t the first time, either, that Norton’s Coin had run well at Cheltenham as he had finished second at the Festival the previous month (this time under Hywel Davies) in the Cathcart Challenge Cup in which there was also a shock winner, 66/1-shot Observer Corps. Dunwoody’s association with Norton’s Coin turned out to be a brief one, however, given he’d become Desert Orchid’s regular partner.
‘He has a good turn of foot which should see his winning more races in handicap company in 1989/90 – he begins the season on a fair mark’ was how Timeform’s Chasers & Hurdlers 1988/89 annual summed up Norton’s Coin’s prospects. But he had an unorthodox campaign leading up to the following season’s Gold Cup, beginning with a heavy defeat in the King George VI Chase in which he finished 39 lengths last of the six runners behind Desert Orchid, though his best run prior to the Festival again came at Cheltenham when he was runner-up in a handicap at the end of January.
The Cathcart, rather than the Gold Cup, had apparently been Norton’s Coin’s long-term aim again, though by the time connections realised he wasn’t qualified (the Cathcart was restricted to first- and second-season chasers), the obvious handicap alternative over the two and a half mile trip, the Mildmay of Flete, had closed. It was therefore as one of the rank outsiders that Norton’s Coin took his chance in a field of 12 for the Gold Cup where one horse dominated the betting.
‘Like anyone else I thought Desert Orchid would win’ admitted Griffiths after the race. ‘Milking the cows this morning, I worked out that with a bit of luck we might be third.’ But even that seemed a highly optimistic assessment given that, as well as the previous year’s winner, odds-on for a repeat success, Norton’s Coin faced a number of other rivals with apparently much stronger claims, notably dual Welsh National winner Bonanza Boy, the up-and-coming Toby Tobias, Irish Gold Cup winner Nick The Brief and the two that had finished runner-up in the last couple of Gold Cups, Cavvies Clown and Yahoo.
In front of what was believed to be a then record Cheltenham crowd, Desert Orchid forced the pace, pressed nearly all the way by 20/1-shot Ten of Spades who led over the last ditch six out where the patiently-ridden Norton’s Coin was now in close touch and belying his odds in going well, in company with Desert Orchid and Toby Tobias. Three out Desert Orchid was back in front but he was forced wide by the tiring Ten of Spades on the home turn and by the second last, where the beaten Ten of Spades fell, it was Toby Tobias who had come through to hold a narrow lead over Desert Orchid and Norton’s Coin.
By the final fence it was clear that Desert Orchid wouldn’t be winning, but Toby Tobias and Norton’s Coin both took it well before the latter produced a strong burst on the flat under very forceful riding to overhaul the game Toby Tobias in the closing stages to win by three quarters of a length. Winning jockey Graham McCourt picked up a three-day ban, a punishment which would have been much greater under today’s stricter rules governing use of the whip.
A below-form Desert Orchid was beaten a further four lengths back in third with the other finishers well strung out, though the favourite came out of the race much better – Desert Orchid bounced back to win the following month’s Irish Grand National under 12-0 – than Norton’s Coin who appeared to walk away feelingly after the Gold Cup and was reportedly confined to his box for several weeks afterwards.
In fact, it was the following January before Norton’s Coin was seen out again. He had a mixed record in the remainder of his career, acquiring a Timeform ‘squiggle’ and failing to complete in the next two Gold Cups, falling on the second circuit when 16/1 in 1991 and pulling up when tailed off as a 33/1 shot in 1992. But he did win again at Cheltenham, landing a second Silver Trophy Chase in 1991 by a head from Waterloo Boy.
Norton’s Coin might no longer hold the record for the fastest Gold Cup but his feat of pulling off the biggest shock in the race’s soon-to-be hundred-year history looks set to stand the test of time.
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