Try, try and try again: the brilliant festival success of One Man 20 years on

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If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Sometimes, though, it isn't as simple as that. One Man had tried, tried, tried again, and failed each time. So if at third you don't succeed, try something different.

Twenty years ago this spring, a three-mile chaser dropped down to two miles for the first time in five and a half years to try his luck in the Queen Mother Champion Chase, the fastest, the most exacting, the hardest two-mile chase in the calendar. But One Man had nothing to lose, because the ten-year-old had lost it all already.

One Man was arguably the most popular chaser in training, a bouncing ball of grey muscle and panache, a charismatic colossus who jumped fences seemingly for the sheer delight it gave him. He was brilliant on the racecourse, he was exceptional at home – "He's beautiful to sit on, like a little ball of fire. I've got a bad back but I'm happier sitting on him than I am on this chair. That spring in him, he comes over those fences like a bird," said his trainer Gordon Richards, lured willingly into lyricism by his pride and joy – but he couldn't win at the Cheltenham Festival.

One Man leads the string at Greystoke, ridden by his trainer Gordon RichardsCredit: Abraham Dan

His defeats followed the same pattern, the same spirit-crushing pattern, the more so because it was obvious that One Man's spirit was being crushed too, such a cheerful horse almost visibly bemused by his own failings. The 1994 Sun Alliance Chase, the 1996 Gold Cup, the 1997 Gold Cup – in each race it seemed as though victory might be in his grasp, occasionally as though victory was assured, yet each time he came up short, labouring at the end, his leaden gait a cruel parody of his earlier fleet-footed fluidity.

"He couldn't get up the hill at Cheltenham, it was beyond him," said Nicky Richards, then his father's assistant at Greystoke stables. So when One Man appeared at the top of the hill in the Champion Chase, hacking happily along at the head of affairs, it was deja vu to those in the grandstands, to those watching on television. We'd seen this before, seen how it ended. Would this time be any different?

Perhaps it had all been One Man's fault to begin with. As he traversed a glorious career, he tricked us into thinking that he was a staying chaser; after all, when a roll of honour groans under the weight of two King Georges, a Hennessy, two Charlie Halls, the equivalent of the Cotswold Chase and a Reynoldstown Chase, what were we supposed to think? On the witness stand, hand on the Bible, the courtroom electric with anticipation, what was there to say? 'He's a Gold Cup horse, your honour', and there the case for the prosecution rested.

It had been that way from the start, from his earliest days in training with Arthur Stephenson. His novice hurdle campaign was seen as a drearily necessary waste of everyone's time, with Stephenson's cry of 'wait until you see him over the black ones [fences]' ringing in our ears, although unfortunately his trainer would never see that, dying halfway through One Man's first season but after – only through the 20-20 glare of hindsight – a seed of doubt had been sown.

On One Man's first visit to Cheltenham, over three miles and one and a half furlongs, he finished a leg-weary third, his comment-in-running reading 'weakened approaching three out'. No-one made anything of it at the time, but those words sat on his record, waiting for their relevance to emerge.

Following Stephenson's death, One Man was offered in the yard's dispersal sale and attracted the interest of newish owner John Hales, who was determined to buy the promising prospect even if he had little idea how to go about it. His initially prudent approach was soon overwhelmed by enthusiasm.

"We'd agreed that my maximum was £6,800 – can't remember why we settled on that figure," he told this newspaper a few years ago. "My wife Pat told me not to do anything stupid, told my daughter Lisa to go with me and make sure I didn't do anything stupid.

"One Man came into the ring and I started bidding – no idea what I was doing, really – and I got him for £68,000. The only thing Lisa said was 'Mum's going to kill you'.

When Hales arrived home that evening, Pat asked him how he'd got on. "I told her I'd been forced to go to the maximum. I also mentioned that the vet said he had feet like a carthorse, two huge splints on his front legs that wouldn't affect him, and 75 per cent vision in one eye.

"He came off the horsebox, Pat had a look at him and said 'You've bought a blind cripple, but I suppose for £6,800 it's not the end of the world.

"After he won his first five races, she started saying 'I think we've bought a good one'."

Those five easy wins in novice chases were followed by that first festival eclipse, but two races later One Man won the Hennessy and apparently closed the book forever on his staying prowess. Non-stayers don't win the Hennessy, do they? That's true, yet the case for the defence could point to mitigation.

"He was a very well-handicapped horse that day," says big-race jockey Tony Dobbin. "He only had 10st, it was quite easy for him, he won as he liked. And Newbury is flat, no hill at the finish."

Nevertheless, the die was cast: One Man was a stayer. Yet there was a body of evidence forming that suggested the verdict might be flawed.

"The most damaging part of his armoury was his mid-race pace, even at three miles," says Nicky Richards. "He more or less won his races between the mile and two-mile points, and he had great cruising speed, spent no more time in the air than necessary at his fences. And he always worked with pace at home."

Gordon Richards wouldn't let anyone else ride One Man at home, saving the fun for himself, and yard conditional Brian Harding remembers numerous work mornings when Richards had asked the string to keep up with him, only to look round at the top of the gallop to find himself alone. "A hell of a cruising speed," reiterates Harding.

The following year the King George had been moved from frozen Kempton to Sandown, and One Man flew up the Esher slopes. He was made 11-8 favourite for the Gold Cup and three fences out, Richard Dunwoody sitting as still as a birdwatcher, One Man was walking on water. A fence later, he was paddling. He barely clambered over the last. He sank without trace.

One Man in numbers

179 Highest Racing Post rating
135 Handicap mark when winning the Hennessy
20 victories in a 35-race career
13 Average winning margin in lengths in his two King Georges
6 jockeys (Chris Grant, Neale Doughty, Tony Dobbin, Mark Dwyer, Richard Dunwoody, Brian Harding)
2 trainers (Arthur Stephenson, Gordon Richards)
1 Cheltenham Festival win

Twelve months on, One Man was right there at the second-last but on the way to the final fence he lost all forward propulsion within three strides, and beaten horses flashed past on his either side. He just couldn't come up the hill. He didn't stay. The case for the prosecution had fallen apart under the sternest of cross-examinations. "We should have learned our lesson before," mutters Hales. "The problem was Sandown, and Newbury."

A change had to come. One Man was soundly beaten in the King George and perhaps it was then that Gordon Richards revised the plan. "Father had a word with Mr Hales," says Nicky Richards. "He said that he'd have a good sporting chance in the Queen Mother, and he should run there.

"It had been very frustrating. Everyone had always built him up as a Gold Cup winner, we'd head south with the highest of hopes, and come home thoroughly disappointed. There was a cloud over Greystoke at the time, because Father was quite ill. The place needed a lift."

One Man moved down in trip at Ascot, reunited with Dobbin when Dunwoody was claimed elsewhere, and, as Dobbin remembers, he won the Comet And Sony Chase well. It set him fair for the festival, although probably not as surely as the piece of work he did ten days before the big meeting.

"He was absolutely buzzing in the run-up," says Richards. "He worked with Unguided Missile and just blew him away, it was a blistering piece of work, he was in fantastic shape. I remember Tony [Dobbin] saying 'whatever beats him will have to win'."

When Unguided Missile won the three-mile [Ultima] handicap chase on the first day of the festival, that piece of work looked even better. What didn't look so good was Dobbin's wrist, broken in a fall from Direct Route two races earlier. At the eleventh hour, Brian Harding was deputised. He'd had nothing planned.

"I would have probably had the day off, watched the race on television," he says. "I'd been at Sedgefield that day, didn't know what had happened to Tony. I only found out that night, I talked to Gordon, and he and John Hales put their faith in me.

"I wasn't long back from injury myself, I'd been off for a year. I'd never ridden One Man in a race but I'd schooled him plenty at home. It was very good of the 'Boss' to trust me with the ride – I was lucky. It was the best spare ride I've ever had."

Hales wasn't particularly confident, his mood dampened by a journalist who wrote that he'd jump off the grandstand roof if One Man won. It was a decent Champion Chase without being a blockbuster, with previous winners Viking Flagship and Klairon Davis, 1997 runner-up Ask Tom, who was favourite, and the previous year's Arkle winner Or Royal in opposition. Dobbin didn't see the race; as the tapes went up he was under anaesthetic, a surgeon splicing together his scaphoid bone. Gordon Richards watched on television at home, too ill to travel.

"Jumping was his forte, my job was to get him into a good rhythm," says Harding. "Over three miles two it would have been a case of hanging on to him, taking him back, but over two miles I could let him use his natural speed, his zest for racing. I got him in a rhythm and it worked out great."

So there was One Man at the top of the hill, hacking happily along at the head of affairs. What next?

"Russ Garritty [on Ask Tom] was upsides and he was pushing his horse along," says Harding. "As we started down the hill I began to think we'd take a bit of pegging back."

As One Man jumped the third last in front a great exhalation of delight came from the grandstands, the sound of a patient, passionate crowd finally getting what it wants. He led over the second last, full of running. After years of anguish, cometh the hour, cometh One Man.

"We turned into the straight and he was away," says Harding. "I knew we wouldn't be caught. It was fantastic, a great thing to be part of."

Where before One Man had clambered over the last fence like a drunk over a wall, now he flew it. "Brian filled him up coming down the hill and he flew up it from the last," says Richards. "Everything had to go right and it did. It was a magical day, a great moment for Father, huge satisfaction for everyone.

"It lifted the whole yard, lifted the gloom hanging over it. Everyone feels about six inches taller when something like that happens - that's what he did for us."

One Man crossed the line four lengths clear of Or Royal, his festival hoodoo lifted in the most glorious manner. For Hales, it was the pinnacle of the grey's career.

One Man clears the final fence on the way to an enormously popular success in the 1998 Queen Mother Champion Chase

"In jump racing, you're never regarded as a true champion unless you win at the festival. His King George wins were very memorable but the Champion Chase has to be the peak.

"He always had such tremendous speed. Hindsight is wonderful but maybe he could have won two or three Champion Chases if we'd never bothered with the Gold Cup."

Harding, recently retired from the saddle and now running a pre-training yard a mile from Greystoke, his other work as a jockey coach helping to ease the difficult transition away from the weighing room, wishes, like so many young men before and many more to come, that he could have his day of days again.

"I'd love to relive it, to go back and take more of it in, appreciate the significance of it all. I met the Queen Mother, but I couldn't tell you anything about it, everything was just a blur. Now I look back and appreciate it all the more."

Dobbin woke up to find his old friend the toast of racing, and if he felt a little sore on two fronts at the time both wounds have healed now. "Missing that race was a hard pill to swallow – I was a young jockey and it would have been important for me.

"But I was delighted for the horse and for the whole yard. He was pretty special, a wonderful animal to have anything to do with."

Let's leave the story there, because what came after is only sorrow. A little over two weeks later One Man was killed in a fall at Aintree. Within six months Gordon Richards had succumbed to cancer at the age of 68. Better by far to remember only that sunny day in March, the indefatigable One Man coming up the hill at last to claim the victory he had deserved all along.

Quirk of the calendar

One horse has won five runnings of the King George VI Chase, another has won four, yet another three, and 11 horses have won two. But only one horse has won the race twice in one year.

This quirk of the calendar came about because Kempton's Boxing Day meeting in 1995 was abandoned owing to snow and frost. The big race was transferred to Sandown and took place on January 6, 1996, and One Man stamped his authority on the rescheduled event when thrashing Monsieur Le Cure by 14 lengths, jumping three more fences than would have been the case had the race been run at Kempton.

He ran only twice between then and the next running of the King George – he was sixth in the Gold Cup and won the Charlie Hall Chase – and was equally dominant at Kempton on the traditional Boxing Day date. On that occasion, ridden as in January by Richard Dunwoody, he justified odds-on billing when strolling home 12 lengths clear of Rough Quest after his nearest pursuer Mr Mulligan had taken a tired fall at the last.

Only 356 days had passed since his first win in the race, a timespan that endears One Man to quiz compilers everywhere.