Four years after his first win in the race, the 11-year-old took the £150,000 May Bank Holiday card’s feature prize back off the field he’d once dominated, and gave his owner a result that mattered for reasons that had nothing to do with racing.
Tommie Beau had gone 14 races without a win, a losing run stretching back 20 months, when he lined up for the Chestnut Group Norfolk National on 4 May. He’d dropped 22lb from his peak rating. Nobody at Fakenham was writing headlines about him beforehand. Benjamin Macey settled him in midfield through the early stages of the 3m5f marathon, nudged him along down the back straight, and asked the question turning for home. Tommie Beau jumped the last in front. He held on by three lengths from Esperti, who’d arrived bidding for a hat-trick, with the previous year’s winner Stan’s The Man back in third.
A record day built around one horse
The Bank Holiday Monday card carried £150,000 in total prize money, the biggest single raceday in Fakenham’s history, and everyone knew walking out the gates which race they’d be talking about. This was Tommie Beau’s second Norfolk National, matching the one he’d taken in 2022, and he beat a field that included a horse chasing three straight wins in Esperti and a reigning champion sent off 7/2 favourite in Stan’s The Man. The official result put the winning distance at three lengths, with the field strung out to 23 lengths back in fourth. The time ran 16.58 seconds slower than standard, on ground that had softened through the afternoon.
Why the tactics worked
Fakenham doesn’t forgive horses that wait too long. It’s a tight, roughly square left-hander, six fences to a circuit, a short run-in. Handy, front-running types tend to have the better of it here, and the track rides more demanding than the official going ever lets on. Macey’s ride understood all of that. Rather than dropping Tommie Beau out and hoping for a strong pace to chase down, he kept the old horse up with the leaders early enough to still be there when it mattered, and asked for everything at the second-last instead of waiting for the final fence. “A veteran with 15 career wins already knows how a sharp track like Fakenham rides,” one racing analyst said, speaking to Gambling.com, home of the best online casino sites and independently reviewed UK betting sites. “That experience is worth more than raw ability once the placing has gone against you as often as it had for Tommie Beau this year.”
What it meant beyond the result
The racing was only half of it. Owner Simon Prout, speaking after the race, tied the win to something bigger than a trophy. He’d brought the horse back to what he called the best racecourse in the country to win back a title first claimed four years earlier, and he didn’t say it lightly given what he and his wife had lived through in the years between. “He’s an exceptional horse. He’s come back to what we think is the best racecourse in the country and won the title he won in 2022. We love Fakenham,” Prout said. It’s a line that gets said at a lot of racecourses. At Fakenham that afternoon, it happened twice. In the day’s other big prize, the £26,000 Chestnut Group Fakenham Grand Prix Hurdle, Lucy Wadham’s mare Rialannah followed up a recent course win under Gavin Sheehan at 11/2. “Gavin did a great job. She’s a lovely mare and a pleasure to train,” Wadham said. One repeat winner led straight into another.
Looking ahead to October
Fakenham’s jump season now sits quiet until the New Season Opener on Friday 16 October. It’ll take some going for the autumn return to match a card that produced a record prize fund, two horses backing up their own course form, and a story that went well beyond the winning post. For a small Norfolk track competing for attention against the bigger jump venues most of the year, days like this one are what bring the regulars back. Whether Tommie Beau, now 11, gets a shot at a third Norfolk National remains to be seen. Prout doesn’t sound like a man planning on retiring him any time soon.
Content provided by Peter McNeile
