Sir Mark Prescott has cherished memories of special York moments

Rhyl Journal

2 days ago

The Heath House handler's career was in its infancy when he sent Heave To up the A1 to contest the Ford Cortina Cup in 1971, but it was a victory which would become the springboard for one of the greatest training careers ever curated and by one of racing's most decorated characters.
'York has been very good to me and in my first season I won with a horse called Heave To,' said Prescott.
'It was the richest sprint handicap in Britain at the time and as it's name implied, it was very, very richly endowed. It was for six-furlong three-year-old sprinters and him winning made a great difference to my first couple of years.
'It would be most memorable for me because it came when I needed it and he would go on to win the Victoria Cup, he really helped get me going.'
Many York patrons will also remember fondly – as does Prescott himself – the gamble landed with Graham Rock's Pasternak in the race formally known as the Magnet Cup and now the John Smith's, leg one of an audacious double which would be completed in the autumn when scooping the Cambridgeshire.
However, York's most prestigious handicap of them all and the centrepiece of the Ebor Festival would enter Prescott's grasp in 1994 when Hasten To Add finally relieved his handler of the heartache of some previous crushing defeats.
'Before York everybody thought he had won the Northumberland Plate except a very wise old punter who was there,' reminisced Prescott on his agonising reversal prior to the Ebor at Newcastle.
'I thought he had won, television, everyone thought he had won.
'Yet as I pranced down to meet him convinced of what a wonderful trainer I was, this old punter who had been in the police force came up to me and said 'I have reason to believe that you may not have won' which was such a lovely phrase and way of disappointing me and of course he was right.
'He had been second in the Duke of Edinburgh and second in the Northumberland Plate and he'd also been fourth beaten at the shortest price ever in the Cesarewitch, so York was a great day and came at the right time, it was good to win the race and get it ticked off.'
For all the handicaps landed and plots successfully accomplished, Prescott has always been more than just a one-trick pony and over the years he has returned to the Knavesmire with the cream of the Heath House crop to take home some of the Ebor Festival's most prestigious events.
Pivotal gave long-time Prescott owners Cheveley Park Stud one of their greatest days when battling to a narrow Nunthorpe Stakes victory in 1996, but an even more dramatic finish to York's sprint showcase came eight years ago when Marsha provided the veteran trainer one of his most memorable triumphs of recent times.
With Marsha going head-to-head with American hotpot Lady Aurelia in the closing stages, the race is remembered by many for Frankie Dettori's steadfast confidence as the pair of courageous mares flashed past the winning line in unison.
Watching from afar, Prescott was one of those to be initially convinced by the mercurial Italian's bravado at the finish, but gasps would soon ring out around the racecourse as the judge delivered the verdict in Marsha's favour, with the victory proving a catalyst for a record 6,000,000 guineas fee at the sales later that year.
'She won a nose when no one thought she had got it, including poor Mr Dettori,' explained Prescott.
'I was looking at yearlings at Miss (Kirsten) Rausing's in Ireland at the time so I wasn't there and I was watching on television and thought what a shame she got beat. I went straight back to what I was doing, so I certainly didn't read it right.
Frankie celebrates… but it's Marsha who wins the Nunthorpe in a photo! Lady Aurelia is beaten by the tiniest margin pic.twitter.com/KK1OjojdE8
— ITV Racing (@itvracing) August 25, 2017
'Richard Hoiles, the commentator, was the only person who got it right, he said something like 'Frankie thinks he has won it, but I'm not sure he is right' – it was his great day as well.
'Everyone you would meet in the street said they owned a bit of Marsha and when she sold for the record price, she secured the future of the Elite Racing Club and their breeding operation forever.'
York may have been the defining moment of Marsha's career, but for one of Prescott's greatest alumni, the Knavesmire proved just a stopping point on the road to greater things when Alpinista set up her historic Prix de l'Arc de Triomph bid with victory in the Yorkshire Oaks.
Exceptional on her travels, but still in the eyes of many swimming under the radar when making the trip to Yorkshire somewhat under duress in August 2022, she headed home with a fifth straight Group One to her name and ParisLongchamp glory within reach.
'She had been doing a lot of her Group One winning abroad and the Arc was the aim. I had it in mind that we had beaten all the French fillies before in the previous Group One so we would go for the Prix Vermeille where you knew you could beat them,' explained Prescott on his initial reluctance to head to York.
'However, Miss Rausing said she would like it to be York as Alpinista had never won a Group One in England. If it was left to me she would have gone to the Vermeille, but as it turned out Miss Rausing was right.
'She became favourite for the Arc almost straight away which was when the worries started! From then on it all began to get tense.
'She was always under the radar and she won all those Group Ones in succession yet there wasn't any real pressure on us until after York and building up to the Arc.
'I had no one ringing up asking for quotes on how she was doing or anything and she had won five Group Ones! But then all of a sudden the phone did start ringing, quite regularly as well!'