Osborne's rain dance pays off as Raising Sand delivers for Nicola Currie
Whatever big wins lie ahead for her, Nicola Currie will never forget Raising Sand, on whom she enjoyed a second major Ascot handicap success when beating Hollie Doyle and Kaeso a head in a £150,000 Moet & Chandon International finish dominated by the season's two most successful female riders.
Currie, 26, won an even more valuable handicap on Nick Bradley Racing's seven-year-old over the same course and distance in October, but neither she nor trainer Jamie Osborne held out much hope of a repeat for the soft-ground lover when the midweek heatwave was baking the ground dry.
Luckily for those concerned, that all changed when Ascot was hit by 9mm of rain on Friday night and with the going changed to good to soft, connections just had to pray for luck in running.
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