Racing: Royal end to a Flight of fancy

Just as the fairy story was about to be completed in the Ormonde Stakes yesterday, Royal Court ruined it by beating the old soldier Further Flight. It was rather like Prince Charming marrying one of the ugly sisters.

Further Flight's grey dappled figure is the sort you see in bedtime books and he seems to have been around since we were much younger. The 11-year- old arrived for competition yesterday with 56 starts to his name, 22 of them victories, and the prospect of carrying his regular jockey, Michael Hills, to his 1,000th career success in Britain. The romantic scene was set.

If Further Flight was the good guy, the bad lad of the race was his stablemate Moonax, the 1994 St Leger winner, whose preferred diet is human flesh. There is a giveaway clue that the chestnut is not the most pleasant of customers when he is escorted into the parade ring by his lass. Joyce Wallsgrave accomplished this duty yesterday wearing a body protector and heavily wadded arm guards. She looked like Wayne Gretzky.

Moonax himself did not appear particularly cuddly. He slavered rabidly, sending saliva back over his mane, and refused to leave the paddock. Once he emerged on to a course fringed by a harlequin canopy of umbrellas the six-year-old displayed his dressage skills by going into reverse.

Darryll Holland eventually got him down to the start, where stallhandlers appeared to be drawing straws. Moonax was blindfolded and led into his stall, where he promptly squatted. This proved a cathartic act, however, and as soon as the gates opened Moonax behaved like a cherub.

Election Day tugged the field along for much of the journey but there were figures moving much more smoothly in behind. Moonax looked dangerous off the final bend, but then Further Flight, whose low head carriage suggests he might kick himself in the teeth, and Royal Court settled down to fight out the finish. Only close home did the veteran succumb.

The winner's trainer, Peter Chapple-Hyam, was formerly assistant to Further Flight's handler, Barry Hills, and he would have understood if hissing had greeted his entrance on to the stage of the winners' enclosure. "Further Flight is a grand old horse and I'm sorry to have beaten him even though I've not managed that before," he said. "I was assistant when he was two and three and he won the Ebor so I know what a grand old horse he is."

John Reid, the muddied winning jockey, bore the look you normally see in a colliery cage. He panted out his race report. "I was more or less pushing him for the whole of the race just to keep him in it, but you always know that when you put your foot down on the pedal he is going to pick up a bit," Reid said. "It wasn't easy. It was hard work for him and me."

While Reid feasted on earth the victorious owner was probably finishing off his digestif. Royal Court's victory completed a clean sweep of the meeting's major races for Robert Sangster, who had also won the Chester Vase (Panama City) and the Chester Cup (Top Cees). Sangster rarely seems to make bad moves and his decision to forsake the atrocious weather of the Roodeye for London business meetings and a spot of lunch at Daphne's hardly looked calamitous either.

The mere mention of Further Flight is enough to reduce Barry Hills to tears and there was moisture in his eyes and a croak in his voice as he detailed his disappointment. "It would have been a fairytale if he had won because it would have been Michael's 1,000th winner and we all know how much that horse has helped his career," Hills snr said. "If he hadn't have been going as well as that he would probably have won. He has been a very good horse and still is."

Hills could also make excuses for Jack The Ripper and was protective about the crazed Moonax. If you suggest the horse might be calmed by testicle severance Barry agrees the operation should go ahead but that the questioner should be the patient. "We'll think about putting a half pair of blinkers on to make him concentrate in future," he said. "He did take the piss out of everybody today but once he set off he ran a very genuine race. He's run his heart out today." It was not an afternoon, however,when the collective heart got what it desired.