Robbie Power has eyes fixed on King George glory with Lostintranslation

For many among the 20,000 crowd at Kempton Park on Thursday afternoon, the King George on Boxing day is as familiar and traditional a part of their Christmas experience as feeble cracker jokes and indigestion. For others, though, this will be their first taste of the unique atmosphere at the showpiece event of the festive racing programme. Robbie Power, for instance, who will be riding Lostintranslation, one of the favourites, in the day’s big race.

Power is 37 and in his 19th season as a jump jockey, with a cv that already includes wins in the Grand National, the Cheltenham Gold Cup and more than two dozen other Grade One races on the sport’s biggest days. But his route through jumping’s major events has never before taken him to Kempton Park on Boxing Day. In fact, he has had only one ride at the course in his life, in a hurdle race just a couple of months ago.

“I’ve been coming over to England for a few years to ride for Colin [Tizzard, Lostintranslation’s trainer],” Power says, “but he doesn’t actually run that many at Kempton, so I’ve always been in Ireland on Boxing Day for the last few years and never ridden in a King George. But I’d never had a ride in the Gold Cup before I won that, so I don’t read too much into it.

“It makes no difference to me whatsoever. I’ll have a walk of the track, have a chat with Ruby [Walsh] and Barry [Geraghty] about King Georges and how the race might ride.

“But it’s not rocket science, Cyrname [his biggest rival] is going to make the running and whether something takes him on or not, I don’t know, but I know I won’t. It’s not going to be very tactical, I’ll just ride another race.

“Whether there’s six runners or 18 runner in a race, it’s all about getting into a rhythm and that’s always the aim.”

The confidence that comes with big-race success radiates from Power just now, as it has for the last three years. His most significant win came relatively early in his career, when a then little-known trainer called Gordon Elliott, who had still not saddled a single winner in Ireland, booked Power for Silver Birch, a 33-1 outsider, in the 2007 Grand National. But subsequent Grade One wins arrived in more of a trickle than a flood until an afternoon at Galway in the summer of 2016 when his days in the saddle could have been over for good.

Power was kicked in the head after an early fall in a big field of novice hurdlers, suffering a serious injury to his left eye which left him with double-vision when looking forward from a jockey’s crouch in the saddle. Surgery, followed by many months on the sidelines, was starting to seem inevitable until Ian Flitcroft, one of Ireland’s top eye specialists, suggested using a modified pair of goggles to correct the problem.

A few months later – when he would probably have still been sidelined had he opted for surgery – Power won the Cheltenham Gold Cup on Jessica Harrington’s Sizing John, and kicked off a golden run of form at the highest level that shows no sign of stopping. In all, there are now 29 Grade One wins on his record, no fewer than 19 of which have arrived since the start of 2017.

Power will have a fine chance to reach 30 career Grade Ones when he rides over fences at Kempton for the first time aboard Slate House, the likely favourite, in the Kauto Star Novice Chase. Just 35 minutes later, he will set off on Lostintranslation, currently a 15-8 chance behind the 7-4 favourite Cyrname, hoping to reaffirm his long-standing belief that the seven-year-old could be his second Gold Cup winner in three months’ time.

Power suggested after winning his first Gold Cup that he might not have fully appreciated what it meant to win the Grand National a decade earlier. Now, though, every winner and new opportunity is cherished, and so at 6.40am on Boxing Day, a moment of the year when most of us would not dream of being up and about, Power will be on a flight to Heathrow for his first taste of Kempton at Christmas.

“It’s like life in general,” he says. “The older you get, the more you appreciate things. I thought when I won the Grand National I was going to win everything, but that’s not the case in this game. I’d had a few tough times since I won the Grand National, the injury to my eye and my back, a few different things, and when it came around to winning the Gold Cup, I was 35, it was my first ride and I didn’t think I’d ever have a Gold Cup horse.

“When you get one, you really appreciate it and hopefully there’s another one coming along now. Winning a Gold Cup meant trainers in England took more notice and now I’m lucky enough to be riding for two top trainers on either side of the Irish Sea [Harrington and Tizzard]. It doesn’t make the flights any cheaper but you don’t mind the travelling when you’re coming over to ride good horses.”

source: theguardian.com