Wadham Looking To Sky For Poignant First Festival Win

“You start to feel like you're waiting for Godot,” says Lucy Wadham, referring to the fictional character who never actually appears in Samuel Beckett's play of the same name.

It has been a long winter and the days can seem to pass agonisingly slowly when you have a horse aiming for a big-race target, but the sand in the Cheltenham Festival hourglass has now nearly all run through. Wadham has only to wait until Tuesday afternoon to unleash the bonny grey mare who has been at the forefront of the trainer's excellent season.

As we meet a week ahead of the start of the Cheltenham Festival, it is not just the thought of her forthcoming runners that are occupying Wadham's mind, however. Step into any trainer's yard at 6.30 in the morning and ordinarily they will be busying themselves with getting first lot out and about, but these are strange times and, as Wadham appears, conversation turns instantly to the appalling  situation in Ukraine. She doubtless speaks for many when she says, “It's hard to think about anything else at the moment really.”

But in the bubble of British and Irish National Hunt racing, minds have been focused on Cheltenham for months. For many it is more exciting than Christmas and now here we are: jump racing's Christmas Eve. Early on Tuesday morning, Wadham will be on her way to the Cotswolds with Martello Sky (GB) (Martaline {GB}), who is set to line up for the G1 Close Brothers Mares' Hurdle.

The exuberant 6-year-old has a lightness of action and could be mistaken for a Flat horse amid Wadham's predominantly jump-orientated string, but within her smaller frame is contained an enormous will to win. In just 12 starts since she first stepped onto a racecourse just over two years ago, Martello Sky has come home in front eight times. When she won on debut, her breeder Tim Wood, was there to see it. Tragically, Wood, who had been paralysed in a hunting fall six years earlier, died 18 months ago, leaving his brother Simon and sister Kate Dixon to continue racing his pride and joy with friends Toby Sexton and Mark and Dawn Dewson under the name of The Sky Partnership. 

“Tim would have loved all this. Every time she wins, and she does that quite often, we all get rather tearful,” says Wadham, whose eye never leaves her horses as they stroll past en route to the gallops, the diminutive Martello Sky, ridden by Polly Gunn, tucked in behind the strapping seven-time winner Potters Legend (GB) (Midnight Legend {GB}), now 12.

The stable has also been home to Martello Sky's half-sisters Mystic Sky (GB) (Midnight Legend {GB}) and Iconic Sky (GB) (Sixties Icon {GB}), who won eight races between them, as well as their dam, the Cloudings (Ire) mare Kentucky Sky (GB). She was also a winner in Wood's black-and-white silks and finished runner-up in the Listed EBF Mares' Bumper at Sandown.

“We've trained all the girls in the family,” Wadham recalls. “And Martello Sky has just been very straightforward to train really. We always liked her at home and then first time out at Fakenham she looked like she was going to be nowhere, but then suddenly the penny dropped and she overtook the whole field and won going away by a few lengths. That was the beginning and she's now won eight. And she's a dual Cheltenham winner, which is always encouraging going into the Festival.”

She continues, “Her jumping has improved out of all recognition this year. We ran her in the mares' novices' hurdle at the Festival last year and she just wasn't experienced enough. She took a dive over the second and Bryony [Frost, jockey] had to give her a bit of time to recover. She finished very well–it wasn't actually a bad run given that she had nearly fallen at the second hurdle–but her jumping is a lot sharper now.”

Indeed, since that eighth-place finish at Prestbury Park last year, Martello Sky's progress has been eye-catching. She won the Listed hurdle on the all-mares card back at Cheltenham last April before a triumphant reappearance this season at Market Rasen. Her only defeat in that time has come when fourth behind Brewin'upastorm (Ire) at Aintree in November, and Martello Sky has since downed the colours of the equally tough mare Indefatigable (Ire) at Cheltenham and then landed her second Listed success at Sandown in January. 

Wadham adds, “She's very athletic and light on her feet, and handles soft ground surprisingly well. She's versatile on ground, which is helpful. When they are small and light like that it really can help from a soundness angle.”

The trainer also credits Bryony Frost with having played an important role in the mare's development even though that for four of Martello Sky's last five starts she has had to be riding elsewhere to fulfil her commitments to her boss Paul Nicholls.

During that time, Frost has endured the contentious court case which saw her fellow jump jockey Robbie Dunne banned for 18 months for bullying and harassing Frost. That episode has not yet been concluded as Dunne has appealed against his ban and the appeal will be heard by the BHA on March 30.

Along with the champion trainer Paul Nicholls, Wadham is one of only a handful trainers regularly using the services of Frost, who in 2019 became the first female jockey to ride a Grade 1 winner at the Cheltenham Festival aboard Frodon (Fr). Frost returns with that old friend in the G3 Ultima Handicap Chase on the opening day of this year's Festival, with Martello Sky being her only other ride on Tuesday. 

“Bryony has become a good friend and I think she is a wonderful jockey,” says Wadham, a staunch supporter of the woman who started race-riding in point-to-points, just as she did. 

“She has an extraordinary way of improving horses. Last year some of our fillies, like Regarding Ruth, Sorbet, and Martello Sky, they all improved for having her riding them. And that's a real gift. Also the horse always comes first for her. She would never carry on on a horse that couldn't, and she comes to ride them all here and gets to know them. She's been a real asset to the yard.”

That yard, despite housing a much higher number of jumpers than Flat horses, is based firmly in the Flat racing heartland on the edge of Newmarket Heath at Moulton Paddocks. If that name sounds familiar it is because it is more commonly associated through the summer with Charlie Appleby's Godolphin stable, which is right next door. While her neighbours in blue greatly outweigh Wadham's relatively small string numerically, the trainer, always ably assisted by her husband Justin, has very much upheld the good run of that corner of Newmarket over the years. 

The Dark Lord (Ire), trained for the Wadhams' great friends Anthony and Victoria Pakenham, became her first black-type winner in a Listed hurdle in 2004 carrying the colours worn by the Marcus Tregoning-trained Sir Percy (GB) to win the Derby two years later. The next major success for the stable came with another mare, United (Ger) (Desert King {Ire}), winner of the G1 Champion Four-Year-Old Hurdle at the Punchestown Festival. United also brought Wadham the closest she has come to winning at the Cheltenham Festival when she was second to the mighty Quevega (Fr) in the same race Martello Sky contests on Tuesday. 

But the stable is far from one-dimensional. For the Pakenhams, Wadham has also trained the Flat stakes winners Cassique Lady (Ire), Crystal Gal (Ire) and Lady Tiana (GB), with the latter, winner of the G2 Lancashire Oaks, being extra special for her owner/breeders as she is a daughter of Sir Percy.

“I think jumping is really our main love,” says Wadham, whose daughter Mimi is one half of the increasingly prominent sales consignment company WH Bloodstock, with her friend and business partner Violet Hesketh. “We enjoy the Flat but jumping just seems a bit more noble somehow, I don't know why.”

She continues, “I love being here in Newmarket though. I think it keeps us under the radar which I quite like. But the lads all follow the jumping and when we're riding out they will call across and say 'how is she?' Everyone is really interested. Newmarket loves Cheltenham, and you don't feel like you're not part of the team here. There's a lot of banter on the Heath, which is fun.”

The last time Newmarket welcomed a Cheltenham Festival winner home was in 2006, when the James Fanshawe-trained Reveillez (GB) won the Jewson Novices' Chase for JP McManus. Prior to that, Fanshawe had been represented by two Champion Hurdle winners in Hors La Loi (Fr) and Royal Gait (GB), the latter for Sheikh Mohammed, who also owned the 1990 Champion Hurdle winner, Kribensis (GB), trained by Sir Michael Stoute. In the 1970s, Harry Thomson 'Tom' Jones trained the outstanding Tingle Creek from Newmarket, but brilliant though he was, the great two-mile steeplechaser never won at Cheltenham. Go back farther still to the 1930s and you'll find an even greater name from the National Hunt annals, Golden Miller (Ire), the winner of five Cheltenham Gold Cups and the Grand National, who was trained in Newmarket's neighbouring village of Exning by Basil Briscoe.

“Historically loads of good jumpers have been trained here,” Wadham says. “So there's no reason not to train jumpers in Newmarket. The facilities are fantastic for any type of horse. I think really if you can't train a horse in Newmarket you might as well give up.”

Wadham certainly has no reason to do that. With another mare, Miss Heritage (Ire) (Pour Moi {Ire}), having provided the stable with a Grade 2 victory in the Yorkshire Rose Mares' Hurdle at the end of January, she is on course to record her best season since first taking out her licence some 30 years ago, and on the back of her previous personal best in 2020/21. A Grade 1 win at the Festival would cap it all, even if the circumstances would once again have Martello Sky's owners and trainer in tears. The wait is almost over.