Racing: Maguire and Pearl rise from the depths

No more will Florida Pearl be the nearly horse. It was a station at which yesterday's King George VI winner has never really stopped and now he will certainly go down not as an underachiever but as one of the outstanding jumping horses of modern times.

A race record of 12 wins from 22 races and just under £700,000 in prize-money is hardly admissible as evidence of fragility, but such has been the expectation that has dogged the Irish horse's every step that he has been somehow rewritten as a failure. No more.

Adrian Maguire, the winning jockey, knows too what it is like to be measured against glittering early achievement. Even this year, when he became only the seventh jumps jockey to ride 1,000 career winners, there has been the damning characterisation of a man who never reached his potential. No more.

It would have been easy for both Maguire and Willie Mullins, Florida Pearl's trainer, to be washed along on a tide of self-vindication as the day dimmed at Sunbury yesterday. But they are too big for that. Mullins instead quietly repeated his belief in a horse he has now prepared for success here, twice at the Cheltenham Festival and three times in the Irish version of the Gold Cup.

"I just have absolute faith in the horse and I'll probably never have another horse like him," he said. "People love to knock him, but that doesn't bother me at all. He does everything right.

"When you're in high-class racing like this if anything goes wrong it can be hard to win, but I always felt that one day, when we put it all together, we would have chances of winning King Georges and Gold Cups. Today was the first part."

Mullins could not even find a jockey for Florida Pearl this time last week. That will not be a persistent problem. Paul Carberry and Ruby Walsh, who have ridden the horse before, decided to go to Leopardstown and the young, British-based Irishman J P McNamara was put in for the ride. That came with the proviso that Maguire was not available, and when the frosts visited Wetherby it brought an end to what might have been a life-changing day for McNamara.

Maguire and his driver turned their Mercedes round at Leicester and pulled in at Kempton just in time for the first. When the jockey arrived in the paddock he must have enjoyed the view. Florida Pearl looked magnificent. So much so that Henrietta Knight, the trainer of the second favourite, Best Mate, was tempted to speculate a few pence on her rival.

Out on the track Bellator's race was over as soon as it started. He refused, leaving Bacchanal to make the running. The first circuit represented a phoney war, but then Bacchanal drifted off the rail and Florida Pearl was in front. Maguire was never to relinquish the conductor's baton.

"We took a more positive attitude with him for this race," Mullins reported. "He just seemed to ease his way to the front and was delighted to be jumping in front.

"I told Adrian that if he was happy with the horse he should not be afraid to go on. Maybe at times in the past we have held him up too much, because he enjoyed himself out there today. I just worried over the last that he might flatten out, but it didn't happen."

Go Ballistic and then Legal Right dropped off the increasing tempo and, at the entrance to the straight, it was the toadstool-red cap with white spots on Maguire's head which was the one to catch. First Gold, the favourite, drifted into the centre of the course and out of the race, Bacchanal's lack of speed was exposed and, finally, even the flying Best Mate was made to look a horse without the final gear which differentiates the great from the good.

It was a beautiful moment for Maguire who has also known the beastly on this occasion. After his victory on Barton Bank in 1993 he fell when clear at the last on the same horse 12 months later. "I had my highest moment in racing here on Barton Bank," he said, "and probably my lowest moment on the same horse."

It may well be that Maguire will now keep the ride on Ireland's first King George winner since Captain Christy in 1975 as an even greater prize twinkles in the distance.

"The Gold Cup is all about the day," Mullins said. "Being right on the day. There are lots of horses who wouldn't do half what Florida Pearl has done and win a Gold Cup and he's looking stronger and better this year than he ever has.

"If he's not entitled to go for a Gold Cup there are lots of horses who shouldn't even be thought of. I hope I can hold him in this form until March."

GOLD CUP (Cheltenham, 14 March): Coral: 6-1 Sackville, 7-1 Best Mate, 8-1 Lord Noelie, 10-1 Bacchanal & Shooting Light, 11-1 Looks Like Trouble, 12-1 First Gold, Florida Pearl & Marlborough; Ladbrokes: 7-1 Sackville, 8-1 Best Mate & Shooting Light, 10-1 First Gold, Florida Pearl & Looks Like Trouble, 12-1 Lord Noelie & Marlborough; William Hill: 6-1 Sackville, 8-1 Best Mate & First Gold, 10-1 Bacchanal, Looks Like Trouble & Shooting Light, 12-1 Florida Pearl & Lord Noelie, 14-1 Marlborough.