Racing: Flyer finally gains chance to show his true colours

Novice Chaser Of The Month: The Arkle Trophy winner, saddled by the former Olympian Jessica Harrington, is a potential champion

The novice chasing division, the future of the sport year on year, is an endless source of fascination. That first glimpse of brilliance can be more thrilling than its subsequent confirmation. Just ask those who were at the Cheltenham Festival in 1963 and saw the six-year-old Arkle destroy his rivals in the Broadway Chase.

That three-mile contest is now the Royal & SunAlliance Chase and although the staying novices are probably not a vintage collection the race sponsors, who have supported embryonic talent all season, still find themselves associated with a potential champion. For the two-mile division looks full of star quality and the hero of the Irish Independent Arkle Trophy Chase at the Festival, Moscow Flyer, is the Royal & SunAlliance novice chaser of the month for March, an award given in association with The Independent.

Moscow Flyer's performance at Cheltenham was one to have the senior title holder Flagship Uberalles looking over his shoulder. The eight-year-old's immediate victims Seebald and Armaturk have franked the form by running, in reverse order, first and second at Aintree last week. Moscow Flyer himself will put his new status on the line at Punchestown in a fortnight.

Recognition for Brian Kearney's gelding is overdue. He has won half of his 22 starts and was a high-class hurdler in both his novice and second seasons, latterly the beneficiary twice when Istabraq fell. "He has never really got the credit for anything he has done," said his trainer, Jessica Harrington.

"He was a very good novice hurdler, but every time he won he beat an odds-on favourite and the focus was always on the excuses and not on him. That was the same last season when he won when Istabraq fell. The only other time they met, Istabraq won and he fell. It was a shame they never both stood up when they met."

Harrington, 55, has 60 inmates at her Commonstown Stables in Co Kildare. She has been around horses all her life; her father trained under permit, her brother, John Fowler, was a leading amateur and she herself is a former Irish Olympic three-day-event rider.

Boundaries between equestrian disciplines in Ireland are thin and when she took out a full licence to train 11 years ago after a few years under permit with her husband, John, the transition was seamless.

Harrington's eventing background means that where jumping is concerned, the horses under her care (the numbers have increased tenfold since she started) know their job. "In any horse-sport the basics of balance and athleticism must surely be the same," she said. "We start ours off over poles as a matter of course and the benefit to racehorses is that they learn to shorten in front of a fence if they have to. They can all take off from the wings but being able to put a short one in properly will stand them in better stead."

Ironically, Moscow Flyer came to Cheltenham on the back of a fall. In six outings over fences he has been on the floor twice, but has won the other four. "People were saying he was a bad jumper, but he's certainly not," said Harrington. "He can pop over a three-foot pole from a trot. First time out it was a novicey fall and the other time they were going so slowly he just jumped too big and forgot about his undercarriage. But he's such a natural that all we had to do before the Cheltenham Festival was remind him over a couple of fences."

Harrington's progress through the ranks of her profession has been marked by successes from the likes of Oh So Grumpy (Galway Hurdle), Dance Beat (The Ladbroke Hurdle ), Space Trucker (Fighting Fifth Hurdle, Grand Annual Chase), Miss Orchestra (Uttoxeter National Trial), Ferbet Junior, Slaney Native and Bust Out, as well as Moscow Flyer.

Events both on an off the track have put her in the public eye in the past 18 months. Her best-ever jumps season was followed by a starring role in an RTE/BBC documentary series about life through a season in a racing stable, Turf Wars, and by election to the board of Ireland's relatively new governing body, Horseracing Ireland, as the trainers' representative.

The success of the TV programme was a pleasant surprise. "It made people realise that racing is not just drinking champagne and dressing up in smart clothes. They saw all the hard work, long hours and disappointments that go on.

"The first few weeks the film crew was with us it was nerve-racking, but as time went on we didn't even notice them, we did our job and they did theirs. What they produced did the sport a lot of good and it did me no harm either."