Sunday’s Grand National Steeplechase was tipped to be the coronation of a legend or the arrival of a new jumps star, but instead the $400,000 event was confirmation of the talents of Mark Walker.
The Kiwi trainer, who is best in Australia for his deeds with 10-time Group 1-winning sprinter Imperatriz, provided the trifecta in the 4500-metre test at Ballarat’s season-ending feature meeting.
Walker’s Leaderboard, with Will Gordon aboard, cruised home 25 lengths clear of stablemate The Mighty Spar, who edged out Prismatic by half-a-length.
It was a much more comfortable win for Leaderboard than appeared likely approaching the last fence, at which $1.75 favourite Noonday Gun fell, and Walker was thrilled to celebrate a feature result with horses he said play an important role in his stable.
“It was just great to see all three horses come back safe and the girls that strap them, Hayley with the winner, Emma with The Mighty Spar and Lisa with Prismatic, they just love these horses,” Walker said.
“They’ve sort of got a dual-purpose, too. They help out in the stables with the yearlings and they’ve got the yearlings going really well this year, so it’s a dual-purpose theme.”
The big margin belied how exciting the race was with Steven Pateman playing a more conservative game than usual aboard champion fencer Stern Idol, who failed to finish as a hot favourite in the previous two editions of the race.
Pateman held the noted front-runner and $3.40 second elect back to the field until around 1200m from home, at which point he attempted to ramp things up aboard the 74kg topweight.
It was evident 700m out that Stern Idol was unlikely to figure in the finish, but he remained a vital member of the cast and was involved in an incident with Noonday Gun jumping the third-last fence.
Noonday Gun lost ground when inconvenienced at that fence, allowing Leaderboard to skip clear but the rising star rallied again in the straight and looked set to engaged in a thrilling final furlong with Leaderboard before faltering at the last fence.
Noonday Gun was quickly to his feet and galloped on, while rider Tom Ryan walked away uninjured.
Stern Idol finished fourth, 26-3/4 lengths from Leaderboard.
Gordon was thrilled to celebrate his maiden Grand National Steeplechase success and had a good feeling about the way the race was panning out in the second lap.
“I can’t really believe it. I went out there with no pressure, just riding the race and riding the horse, and going down the back that last time I thought, ‘I’ve still got a bit of horse, so I might be in the finish’. He’s just a legend,” Gordon said.
“It’s great because this is one of the ones I’ve been missing off the mantelpiece.”
The victory was the biggest jumps success for Leaderboard, an 11-year-old son of Street Cry who started his career in Ireland and won the Group 3 Wellington Cup (3200m) in New Zealand before heading to Australia and has now won $861,388 in stakes.
