Racing: Keen Leader's talents can hold Catherwood's dark memories at bay

Keen Leader is a good horse, perhaps even a great one, the winner of the Royal & SunAlliance novice chaser monthly award for February, an honour given in association with The Independent, has never lost a race he has completed. The worrying thought though for those emotionally and financially behind the favourite for Wednesday's Royal & SunAlliance Chase at the Cheltenham Festival is that the seven-year-old's two capitulations have been at Prestbury Park. It would not be third time lucky.

Adair Catherwood, or Mrs Stewart Catherwood as she is referred to in official racing literature, is not the most stoic of spectators. Keen Leader's owner has learned quite brutally how racing can singe emotions.

In the Grand National of 1987 she saw her Dark Ivy, the 11-2 second favourite behind West Tip, take gracefully to the Aintree fences. At Becher's Brook, though, the grey was blinded. He fell heavily and broke his neck. The camera seemed to linger on his prostrate body.

It was the gruesome moment that prompted Aintree to redesign its most famous obstacle. Dark Ivy's death has certainly preserved those that have come after him. But it has done little for Adair Catherwood's blood pressure when she watches her horses.

"I'll probably watch Keen Leader on the big screen because you can see everything that way. With my fingers over my eyes probably," she says. "I'm a nervous watcher. As long as the horse and jockey come back safely anything else is a great bonus."

The good horses still roll out for Adair Catherwood, the aunt of television presenter Andrea, and widow for eight years of Stewart. Edward O'Grady, Alan King, Richard Phillips and Keen Leader's trainer, Jonjo O'Neill, get the horses these days, while David Nicholson and the late Gordon Richards, the trainer of Dark Ivy and another grey in the Scottish National winner Four Trix, were the forerunners.

A third Greystoke horse in the maroon and grey colours was the barrel of monkeys called Little Bay, once runner-up in a Queen Mother Champion Chase and the recipient of perhaps O'Neill's most memorable ride outside Cheltenham, at Aintree in 1982.

"I took my feet out of the irons after jumping the last and flapped about on him like an inexperienced, incompetent rider," O'Neill remembers. "He was so shocked to find me bouncing about completely out of rhythm with his stride that he forgot himself and started to sprint for the line."

Now O'Neill is the trainer and a proud one too as he paraded Keen Leader at Jackdaws Castle this week. "You have reservations about every novice and I know Keen Leader has fallen at Cheltenham, but that was a sloppy fall," he says. "He went to Haydock straight after that and jumped perfectly, but no one talks about that. He's done it all since. He's learning all the time.

"He's a lot more mature horse in himself this year, alert and aware of the job. He's a very, very good horse, a Gold Cup horse for the future please God."

Keen Leader has won his last three starts by at least 24 lengths. By the time the second horse crossed the line in his most recent outing, Ascot's Reynoldstown Chase, the winner was over the hill and far away.

Adair Catherwood, who has already decamped from her home in Co Antrim to the Lygon Arms at Broadway, near Cheltenham, has another good chance at the Festival. Sheltering, the outstanding hunter- chaser in Ireland of recent years who has inexplicably failed to get beyond the seventh on both his attempts at the Foxhunter, has another stab. His will be a worrying race as will be the one featuring the independently minded Keen Leader.

"When he goes to grass in the summer he's very hard to get hold of again," the owner says. "He doesn't like to come too close to you and he doesn't want to come back in again." On Wednesday, at the foot of Cleeve Hill, that is all Adair Catherwood wants him to do.