Persistent Savill is rewarded by Rebel

The British Horseracing Board chairman gains a Gold Cup victory before a crucial confrontation to settle racing's financial future

It was a win for stubbornness, persistence and staying power for Royal Rebel in the Gold Cup here yesterday. His owner, Peter Savill, hopes the same qualities are also to carry him to victory in racing's most significant battle for four decades.

When off-course gambling in betting shops was legalised in the early 1960s, racing sold its family silver for sixpences. It is not a mistake Savill, the chairman of the British Horseracing Board, intends to repeat as the industry wrestles over the price of media rights with the Go Racing consortium. It is not an issue he has been sleeping on.

The party to celebrate Royal Rebel's success will have to be suspended for 24 hours at least. Savill had arranged a BHB meeting for last night, a meeting which may finally confirm the amount of money which will come swirling into racing's coffers over the next 10 years.

Those who shrink at Savill's robust methods and attitude would like to paint him, after several long recent nights, as the prince of darkness. Soon, however, we will know how much he has delivered for the sport of racing. All that remained for him last night was to convince his fellow board members that he had struck the right deal.

"It's not the end of the world if it falls, but it does have all sorts of ramifications for the industry," Savill said. "I want to get a united, unanimous decision and deliver a deal which is a hell of a lot better than it was a week ago [when Go Racing offered a package worth £307m].

"I was talking to Stoker [Lord Hartington] earlier in the day and saying that I was hoping we could have the double off, Royal Rebel this afternoon and then, hopefully, agreement with Go Racing this evening.

"I'm going to tell them [the board] that we ain't going out of the room until we're all agreed. And I'll be there longer than they will."

Royal Rebel also outstayed everyone else. It was not the greatest Gold Cup in terms of quality but there can hardly ever before have been horses with the armour-plated attributes of both the winner and the glorious runner-up, Persian Punch. The big horse led all the way until two furlongs out, but even when headed he found the reserves to continue the mission all the way to the line. You could have cried for him. His trainer, David Elsworth, actually did.

Johnny Murtagh, Royal Rebel's jockey, said: "I was pushing, pulling him and slapping him and trying to squeeze him to get him to travel as well he could. But when I got half a length up he stopped. If you keep asking him for 110 per cent he'll give it to you, but if you ease up at all he will stop. I was glad to see the line come at the end."

It was a day of a walking through the meadows for Murtagh with the occasional brush with nettles. The Irishman rode three winners but picked up a one-day suspension for his use of the whip on Royal Rebel, as he had done when guiding Sahara Slew to victory in the opening Ribblesdale Stakes. This came against the backcloth of a five-day suspension on the first day. However, Murtagh completed his hat-trick without incurring the stewards' wrath when guiding home Beekeeper in the King George V Handicap.

Sahara Slew was the best from the moment she appeared in the sun-drenched paddock. She won the best-turned-out award and was also going best when the field turned into the straight. She burst past Nafisah in the closing stages for a neck win. A more difficult question will now be asked of her.

"She is improving all the time and she had to improve to win this," John Oxx, the winning trainer, said. "If she carries on going the way she is at the moment we shall certainly think about the Irish Oaks. She will have to improve again to win that, but she is very much going the right way."

Sahara Slew's success was the second at the Royal meeting for her owner, Lady O'Reilly, who collected the Coventry Stakes in 1996 with Verglas. "That was great," she said. "This is very special because she is a home-bred."

* Richard Hughes was ruled out of next week's Irish Derby when he received a three-day ban for careless riding on Lapwing in the Britannia Handicap.