Former racehorse Mister Malarky, who ran in the 2021 Grand National, has enjoyed his second British Eventing victory.
The decorated National Hunt chaser rounded off his first full eventing season with victory in the Tweseldown BE100 section P.
A tough, consistent performer on the racetrack, with major handicap chase victories at Ascot and Kempton, plus a start in the 2021 Grand National to his name when trained by Joe Tizzard and ridden by Jonjo O’Neill Jnr, Mister Malarky has made an exemplary start to his second career with owner/rider Sam Burgess.
Sam is assistant trainer to Hampshire-based National Hunt trainer Richard Bandey, at whose yard the gelding was trained in the latter stages of his career.
“I used to ride out on ‘Jimmy’ every day when he was based with Richard,” explained Sam. “When he retired from racing three years ago, his lovely owners, who are sadly no longer with us, gifted him to me.”
Sam admitted that retraining the 13-year-old chestnut is still a “work in progress”.
“He’s a bit of a dude and has been a lot of fun to retrain, although there have been days when I wasn’t sure he wanted to be an event horse at all,” she said. “Jimmy does what Jimmy wants, and it has taken a long time to bring him round to my way of thinking.”
She added that the gelding’s temperament has lent itself to a solitary discipline like eventing.
“When Jimmy was in training, he didn’t really like being in a string – he preferred to work on his own, so we often trained him that way,” she explained. “Eventing has suited him in that respect, as he is very comfortable doing things by himself and has little interest in being with other horses.
“He loves to flick his toes in the dressage and he has all the scope in the world, but it’s taken a long time to get him to listen to me and become more adjustable for trickier fences such as steps and ditches.”
The pair also won at Waverton earlier this year, and Sam hopes to step up to novice next season and have a tilt at Cornbury’s Retraining of Racehorses championship.
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