In the days when Frank Bruno was the pride of British boxing, his interviews with commentator Harry Carpenter were TV gold.
Bruno’s answer of “you know what I mean Harry”, usually followed by a volcanic laugh, became part of the language and Unowhatimeanharry is expected to be landing the knockout for Harry Fry at Cheltenham this afternoon.
Unowhatimeanharry has won all of his eight starts for Fry and is the hot favourite for the Sun Bets Stayer’s Hurdle, which is not bad for a horse who had won his bumper but had then been beaten on his next 12 starts before Fry bought him last year. It begged the question of whether Fry had second sight or crystal balls but he said: “Although he hadn’t won since his bumper he’d run quite well in defeat and could have won a couple of times.”
Fry had bought Unowhatimeanharry for his racing club as a “fun horse to run regularly”. The fun started when he won at Cheltenham in the November but by the time Unowhatimeanharry had won a Grade Two hurdle the following month the sights were being raised to the Pertemps Final at the Cheltenham Festival.
“Two days after he won a qualifier for the Pertemps at Exeter I rang the handicapper thinking we might get a 7lb or 8lb rise, which he won off 138, and he said ‘that’s the best staying novice hurdler performance I’ve seen all season’,” Fry recalled. “I nearly put the phone down on him."
Instead, Unowhatimeanharry won the Albert Bartlett Novices’ Hurdle, Fry’s first Festival winner although in his days as an assistant trainer with Paul Nicholls he was in charge of the trainer’s satellite base at nearby Seaborough and was responsible for overseeing the preparation for Rock On Ruby when he won the 2012 Champion Hurdle.
Fry took over the full running of the yard seven months later, swapping the safety of receiving a monthly salary cheque for writing another one for the rent although neither probably had quite as many noughts on the end as the one which leading owner JP McManus wrote when he purchased Unowhatimeanharry last summer.
That proved a shrewd move and bought McManus a winter of deep content as Unowhatimeanharry began cleaning up in the staying hurdles division. “We could have gone novice chasing but we felt let’s give him a try in senior company over hurdles in the three-mile division and see if there’s any more improvement with a view to maybe the Stayers’ Hurdle,”
Fry said.
The view looked pretty impressive when Unowhatimeanharry won the Long Distance Hurdle at Newbury by six lengths and followed up in the Long Walk Hurdle at Ascot the following month and the Cleeve Hurdle at Cheltenham in late January.
Having Festival favourite in the yard ratchets up the pressure upon trainers – and the defeat of Neon Wolf in yesterday’s Neptune Investments Novices’ Hurdle did not help – but this is what Fry signed up for.
“You watch them all but definitely I’d be lying if I didn’t say we check Harry just one more time than everything else. But, at the end of the day, they’re animals, they’re not machines, so setbacks do happen. But, touch wood, he’s been A1 and we’ve been very happy with his preparation.
“We have to look forward to it and enjoy the moment. These are the sort of horses you want to be training and for these races. This is what we want. If there wasn’t any pressure it would mean that we didn’t have any horses worth talking about.”
We know what you mean Harry.
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