'You're going to go a million miles an hour into a fence - do not move'

This article was first published on January 22, 2021

The Clarence House Chase at Ascot this year is missing a notable personality.

Lovable tearaway Un De Sceaux has been involved in four of the last five runnings of the race and three years ago became the first horse in history to win three. Having been unfortunate enough to race in an era featuring two outstanding champions in Sprinter Sacre and Altior, it is testament to his zest for racing and iron constitution that he was still able to carve out a legacy all his own.

His owners, the O’Connell family – Colm, his father Eddie, mother Kay and brothers John, Paul and Eamon – had previously enjoyed only limited success and never a Listed or Graded winner, but Un De Sceaux enabled them to live the dream harboured by every prospective racing owner.

After their best horse Turban won the Dan Moore at Fairyhouse seven years ago, bolstering the family’s enthusiasm with a handsome cheque, they tasked trainer Willie Mullins to source them another horse.

“We kind of gave him the impossible task because we gave him a small pot of gold and expectations that were high,” explains Colm O’Connell, who admits he was clueless at the sales.

After months of hearing nothing from Closutton, Colm and Eddie, whose name the horses ran in, were in a coffee shop in Cork city when he received a phone call.

“Willie rang and said ‘you literally have 20 minutes to pay for this horse and wire the money over to France’.

“I said ‘grand’ and we wired the money over. I was there with Eddie at the time. We didn’t know what we’d bought. All Willie said was ‘if we get him to settle he might give you a day out’.”

For a family who weren’t afraid to travel or party, a day out was perfectly sufficient, but the initial indication from Closutton was far from encouraging.

“He came back and the reports were that he was nuts,” says Colm.

“Very early on we got to know the breeder and the guy who trained him to win the APQS races in France. We found out his history and what happened to him and his upbringing.

“They [the breeders] gave him to a local trainer to see what he could do. I’m told the only way they could break him was to take him to a local beach, which is around 12km long, and they said ‘run him until he collapses’.

Un De Sceaux (left) chases home Defi Du Seuil in the Clarence House ChaseCredit: Edward Whitaker

“He would run flat to the mat three miles one way and flat to the mat three miles the other way. They thought they’d get him to settle but there was no way.”

By February 2013, Un De Sceaux was ready to make his Irish debut in a maiden hurdle at Punchestown. Up against the highly touted Sammy Black, it was time for the O’Connell family to see whether they had a racehorse on their hands.

Stable jockey Ruby Walsh had fallen four out on Apt Approach in the previous novice hurdle, breaking his nose, and he warned connections “this will be some job”.

After circling continually to keep the five-year-old under control at the start, Walsh was left with little choice when the tapes went up. Un De Sceaux strained ferociously against the reins and rocketed into the lead.

Soon clear with but never behind his main market rival, Un De Sceaux somehow managed to see out the race comfortably by six lengths.

“Ruby came in after the race and the first thing he started doing was shaking his arms, literally aggressively, and he said ‘I’m not joking you, my arms are burning’,” O’Connell says.

“Willie’s father trained a horse very similar, which they couldn’t get to settle, and we began thinking maybe with Un De Sceaux we should do the same [allow him to front run]. I believe that horse was Dawn Run.”

After winning his next four starts by a combined distance of 111 lengths, talk turned to the 2014 Champion Hurdle, but – while he admits he would have been “there or thereabouts” – to this day O’Connell is adamant the decision not to run was the making of what was to be an astounding career.

“Willie rang me and he ‘look, I’m not going to run him at Cheltenham, I think it would blow him up, he’s a very good horse but he doesn’t deserve that’,” he recalls. “He said we’d go back to France, where the prize-money is exceptional, and then put him over fences and aim for an Arkle.

“Willie’s idea of taking him to France was because the hurdles are like mini-fences and it would give him a great education to chasing.”

'He was literally two fences clear of everything else'

Un De Sceaux rewarded the decision by downing local prodigy Gemix in the Prix Hypothese before winning his second Grade 2 in the Prix Leon Rambaud.

The following November he made his chasing debut at Thurles and the change in O’Connell’s voice over the phone indicates he will never again witness anything quite like it.

“It was the most incredible day,” he says. “It was astonishing to see it. He was literally two fences clear of everything else and he was pulling. There was a little crowd, maybe 2,000 people, but they gasped. It was the most exceptional thing you could see.”

Un De Sceaux inhaled the fences and, such was his lead, he wasn’t even in the television picture when he crashed out three fences from home. Luckily, both he and Walsh got to their feet and O’Connell was eager to hear the debrief.

He says: “By the time Ruby got to the parade ring he met me and said ‘we’re going to Fairyhouse’, bang! He knew the calendar and the sequence of events from there. I asked him how he was going and he said ‘there’s nothing that’s going to beat this one in the Arkle’.

“He went from 6-1 out to 10-1, so that was our opportunity to get a few quid on. It was great because we knew what we had.”

Two bloodless successes followed, first at Fairyhouse and then in the Irish Arkle at Leopardstown, meaning Un De Sceaux lined up at the Cheltenham Festival as the 4-6 favourite with that fall his sole lifetime defeat in 12 starts.

With the family’s previous runners at the track having been “pulled up and if not pulled up last”, O’Connell’s nerves were sky-high in the parade ring.

“We were there to show up, even with a 4-6 favourite,” he says. “I was a bag of nerves, in an awful condition. Ruby had just won the previous race on Douvan and I was white as a ghost. There were 20 of us there, my parents were at home, and he said ‘are you all right?’ and I told him I wasn’t good.

“He said ‘give them a ring at home for me, and tell them I said I’ll have them all on bended knee at the top of the hill’. I said ‘what do you mean?’ He said ‘it’ll be over in a mile’.”

Who could argue with that? It is little surprise the winningmost festival rider of all time predicted the race perfectly. In front by the first, Un De Sceaux was barely challenged and roared up the run-in to give the O’Connell family their first festival winner.

Un De Sceaux and Ruby Walsh fly a fence on the way to winning the Ryanair ChaseCredit: Grossick Racing Photography

From there on in, the ever-growing blue-and-orange-bedecked mob followed Un De Sceaux on his travels, whether it was to Cheltenham, Punchestown, Leopardstown, Ascot or Auteuil.

Always thrilling, never boring. Un De Sceaux won a following to rival any local football club and the family was soon inundated with emails and letters from fans and perennially sold out of themed scarves. They had waited a long time for this and were determined to make the most of it.

“For some reason, it was very strange, he just loved going racing in Britain,” O’Connell says. “We just wanted to have a party. We liked travelling, we’d head off anywhere. He [Willie] ran Turban at Haydock one day and I think he got a shock that so many of us turned up.

“The same crew followed Un De Sceaux, it grew out of nothing. My own siblings, there are four of us, Eddie and his brothers, then friends, and my brother’s friends.

“It grew so much that I was down in my local pub and a guy said ‘I’d love to see him’, and I told him to give me his name and number and promised that next time Un De Sceaux was running he could come with me. I rang him and said ‘your flights are there, your tickets are there, be at the airport for seven o’clock’.

“We always had between 25 and 30 going on every trip. I always used to say that anyone who wanted to go to see Un De Sceaux just needed to give me a text and they could go. You’re never going to see [the likes of] him again. I knew it.”

Fresh from defeating 2014 Champion Chase hero Sire De Grugy in the Tingle Creek and dominating in his second Clarence House (run that season at Cheltenham), Un De Sceaux was now considered mentally and physically mature enough to step up in trip in Britain and he was sent off the 7-4 favourite for the Ryanair Chase.

It was quite simple, it was Un De Sceaux’s way or no way. He had never successfully been restrained before and he was not about to comply now. Walsh could only hold him until the fifth fence, where he burst into the lead and began running a race of his own.

Likened by the jockey to a piece of elastic, he bounded clear and was still fighting Walsh as he jumped the open ditch at the bottom of the hill.

Walsh elicited a pair of dynamite jumps at the final two fences and Un De Sceaux swaggered up the hill to defy Sub Lieutenant and record one of the most breathtakingly memorable festival successes in recent history.

It is O’Connell’s most cherished memory and he explains: “The day he won the Ryanair we had a 32-seater and we all stayed over and it was magic. It was my birthday and it was very emotional.

“It was another day that was just written and meant to happen. The way Ruby was on him, he pulled like mad, the tactics went out the window. Ruby said he was going to hold on to him for a mile and a half. He ran half a mile and then just broke away.”

Winning connections with Un De Sceaux after his first Clarence House Chase victory in 2016Credit: Mark Cranham (racingpost.com/photos)

Other highlights in a gloriously uninterrupted career include two Punchestown Champion Chases. In the 2018 edition Un De Sceaux came up against two of his most accomplished stablemates in Min and Douvan. He was the least-fancied of the three but once again Mr Dependable delivered when others couldn’t and he came home an emphatic winner.

Ridden for 21 of his 34 races by Walsh, Un De Sceaux was also partnered by Barry Geraghty, Paul Townend and David Mullins, but according to O’Connell, it was Patrick Mullins who made the best substitute on that April afternoon.

“He was especially brilliant. I rang Patrick and asked ‘what’s the plan?’ He said he’d spoken to Ruby who had told him ‘look, the tape goes up, do not move on top of him’. That was it. Just sit down and do nothing.

“Ruby said ‘You’re going to go a million miles an hour into a fence, do not get him to jump it, he’ll do it. You do nothing.’ When Patrick came off him he said he was the most intelligent horse he’d ever ridden. A split-second before the fence he’d change his feet. It took an incredible jockey to be able to sit there and leave him.”

It is clear from a conversation which lasts just under an hour – and could have quite conceivably continued for many more – that Un De Sceaux means everything to this Irish family and their chosen spokesperson.

It is easy to understand why Un De Sceaux is the ultimate fans’ favourite. O’Connell has been there every step of the way yet recalls each individual anecdote as if it happened five minutes ago.

Un De Sceaux and Paul Townend after winning the BoyleSports Champion Chase at Punchestown in 2019Credit: Patrick McCann

He concludes: “He became the people’s horse. I believe Un De Sceaux was a very honest horse for the racing public – if you want to introduce someone to racing then you’d want to show them him.

“First of all he’s always going to be first or second, he was always going to jump out and go for it. He’s an easy horse to get people into racing. If anyone had 50 quid on him, they were always there or thereabouts and always getting a buzz off him. We were always there to win.

“It was just meant to be. You look at the Preston family and Sire De Grugy and now with Paisley Park. He slipped into the hands of nobodys like us.”

The dude and his devoted groom

Colm O’Connell is keen to credit one woman at every turn in the Un De Sceaux story, his groom Virginie Bascop.

When asked what he was like to deal with at home, O’Connell responds: “He was a bit of a dude. He had to be first going out into the sand gallops, he had to be first to go out into the yard, he had to be first to be washed down and he had to get his grub first. Everything was first. But that’s because Virginie instilled this belief that ‘you’re the best and you get everything first’.

“There was another guy called Tolic, he’s a very strong individual, all muscles and biceps. And when Un De Sceaux would get close to being match fit Virginie would say ‘I’m not strong enough now, I can’t hold him, Tolic is riding him out’.

“Tolic would come off him and say ‘he’s still pulling me’ and he was an Iron Man-type character. And when he still couldn’t hold him, then they’d say he was ready. I used to say to Ruby ‘if Tolic can’t hold him how are you going to hold him?’”

He adds: “Once I rang Willie Mullins and asked how Un De Sceaux was and he said he thought he had a pain in his stomach. I rang him the next day and he was grand again and that was it. He was never lame and that was testament to Virginie.”

Un De Sceaux with Virginie Bascop at CheltenhamCredit: Patrick McCann

Un De Sceaux was with Bascop from the very start and O’Connell was clear she would be the one to make any decisions about retirement.

He explains: “She put so much work into him and they just took to each other. Without Virginie there would be no Un De Sceaux. He was so hard on himself physically and mentally and I used to say it was because they’re both French! I always said to her: ‘He’s your horse. You decide what happens to him and what’s best for him.’”

When Un De Sceaux was retired after finishing second to Defi Du Seuil in last year’s Clarence House, it was up to Bascop what to do.

The decision was made that his story would go full circle and Un De Sceaux would return to the family who bred him in France.

O’Connell and Bascop receive regular updates and no doubt will plan to visit once Covid-19 restrictions are lifted.

“I get videos and it’s just magical,” says O’Connell. “The family who have him send my brother Eamon videos. It’s not the end for the horse when he stops racing. He’s only 12, please God he’ll live another 20 years and he needs a place where he’ll be looked after and fed and minded.

“He’s in a paddock with a lot of yearlings at the moment and I think he’s just annoying them. I think he’s trying to instill a bit of running into them.

“There’s a yearling filly and she just chases him everywhere, and he runs away and chases her. I told the breeders if any one of them can keep up with Un De Sceaux then give me a shout!”

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