Racing: McManus provides Swan with fitting finale

It is quite appropriate, with the Golden Mile lying just up the Lancashire riviera, that this has been a roller-coaster week for Jonjo O'Neill.

On Thursday, the Jackdaws Castle trainer overturned a fine at the Jockey Club, but, later the same day, lost one of the most promising horses in training with Coolnagorna's demise. The happy rhythm was back yesterday when the trainer completed a hat-trick on a course he believes he never mastered during his days in the saddle. "I couldn't ride the place," O'Neill said, "but it's nice to train one here."

An enduring charm of National Hunt racing came in the identity of O'Neill's owner collaborators, namely JP McManus and a local coal merchant. McManus, who registered a treble of his own when Patriot Games once again had the green and gold at the head of affairs, in the final race, took his good fortune with great equanimity. Robert Lester, Iris's Gift's owner, on the other hand, went bonkers. He engulfed O'Neill in his arms and then afforded him an alarmingly long kiss.

Iris's Gift was bred on the banks of the Mersey by the former jockey Reg Crank and sold privately to Lester for 3,500gns. "I haven't got loads of money but I sent him to Jonjo and he told me to keep the horse after he had walked all over a very expensive horse," the owner said. "He's a machine."

The grey was part of the travelling circus which had pitched camp at Cheltenham last month. There was trouble for the other Cheltenham notables in Sefton Novices' Hurdle though as Pizarro fell and Hardy Eustace struggled from some way out.

Iris's Gift went clear rounding the home turn and ran the field, and ultimately himself, into exhaustion. "He's tough as old boots isn't he?" Jonjo said. "A right horse."

Patriot Games was trained and ridden by Charlie Swan, for whom this was a penultimate day in the saddle. Swan retires today after riding Like-A-Butterfly in the Aintree Hurdle. "I want to go out on one of JP's horses. I now want to give training my best shot. Istabraq's third success in the Champion Hurdle was my finest day."

Clan Royal, the mount of Liam Cooper, was McManus's middle winner, but probably not his favourite. The unsourced money had come for Macs Gildoran, the property of JP's wife Noreen, but the Willie Mullins-trained gelding had to settle for second over the mountains of the Topham Chase.

Post-race, JP remained inscrutable. "The horse has done us proud and both horse and man rose to the occasion," he said. For O'Neill it was triumph in a race he won as a rider with Clear Cut in 1974.

Carbury Cross is Jonjo's first runner in the National this afternoon, when he attempts to extract himself from a mire of poor recent form. "If he runs as well as he did in the Hennessy he could get himself into the shake-up," the trainer said, "but he has been so disappointing recently that you just wouldn't know with him. He is very, very well though and in grand form."

The afternoon's high quality race went to a similar horse in Native Upmanship, who, Moscow Flyer apart, is the outstanding two-mile chaser in these islands. He spread his talents over an extra four furlongs for the second consecutive year in the Melling Case yesterday, enabling Conor O'Dwyer to make quite a monkey out of Britain's champion jockey at the same time.

Tony McCoy, on board Seebald, was mocked in the closing stages as a motionless O'Dwyer remained a length in front of his whirling pursuer all the way up the run-in. That was the prelude to one of racing's more absurd victory celebrations, the one where Arthur Moore puts his trilby between the ears of a big-race winner. It has been this way since the trainer's father Dan won the Grand National with L'Escargot in 1975.

"It is lovely to have the chance to do that," Moore Jnr said, "but it was very bad for the heart watching Conor ride like that on the run-in when Tony McCoy was driving Seebald for all he was worth."