'Yes, I'll be there' - reluctant traveller Prescott set to end 21-year absence

Sir Mark Prescott has confirmed he will break a habit of more than two decades by travelling to Longchamp to watch Alpinista run in Sunday's Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe (3.05).

Prescott was speaking to the Racing Post for a major interview in Sunday's newspaper in which he discusses his chances of Arc success, the prospect of retirement, an astonishing night with Eric Clapton that ended in ignominy and his legendary aversion to foreign travel.

The Newmarket trainer, who has never been to Germany despite his superstar mare winning three Group 1 races there during her sensational rise to the top, was last seen on a French racecourse for the 2001 Arc – "the trainer went over for the day and came home as soon as he could" – in which he saddled Foreign Affairs to finish tenth behind Sakhee.

However, he will be making an exception for Alpinista, on the insistence of the five-year-old's owner Kirsten Rausing.

Alpinista: second favourite for the Arc behind LuxembourgCredit: Edward Whitaker

"Yes, I'll be there," he said. "Miss Rausing has insisted I go to Paris and she's taking it very seriously. I think we're going on a flying carpet."

Asked what was behind his 21-year absence, Prescott pointed to vomit and disillusionment.

"I had a shocking journey when [five-time champion jockey] Doug Smith was violently ill in the plane and handed me his sick bag once he'd filled it," he explained. "What he thought I was going to do with it, I don't know, but it wasn't what I was hoping for.

"Mostly, though, it's the aftermath of the race that puts me off. I've had those terrible trips when you're hermetically sealed with the owner and yours has run extraordinarily badly, you trudge across the car park and you're always in a private plane which has been chartered by the people that had the winner, and they're ecstatically happy and they won't leave the course at the end of the day and they won't get on the plane and your owner is silent while they're all roaring with laughter and corks are popping.

"And, of course, your owner's silence is inevitably punctuated every half an hour by a voice saying: 'How much did you say it cost to get our horse over here?'"

Read more from Sir Mark Prescott in The Big Read, available in Sunday's newspaper or online for Members' Club Ultimate subscribers from 6pm on Saturday. Click here to sign up

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