“I’m so very proud of him,” he says, “he’s had eight years at the top level and he’s still good enough. He’s never really let us down and I don’t know when I’ll ever get another one like him again, but I’m sure going to love him while I have him.”

Michael Hourigan, you feel, could talk about Dorans Pride for days. The pair of them have enjoyed eight seasons together, including triumphs, near-triumphs and a few near-disasters, and the trainer’s voice takes on a rich, paternal glow as soon as the name is mentioned. “I’m so very proud of him,” he says, “he’s had eight years at the top level and he’s still good enough. He’s never really let us down and I don’t know when I’ll ever get another one like him again, but I’m sure going to love him while I have him.”
Dorans Pride has got under the skin of many punters and racegoers too, not least because it is difficult to remember a time when he wasn’t around. He has had 59 races and 28 successes since making a winning debut in a bumper at Ballinrobe on 19 April 1993, and while contemporaries such as Danoli and Sound Man have long since retired, or worse, Dorans Pride’s form endures.

He will be as stiff an opponent as ever for his rivals in the Hennessy Gold Cup at Leopardstown on Sunday, and will then head to the Cotswolds for a fourth attempt to win the Gold Cup at Cheltenham, with perhaps a hurdle race in between, just to keep him interested.It has been an extraordinary career by any standards, and indeed, steadily more so in recent months. In November, Dorans Pride won the November Handicap on the Flat at Leopardstown, beating any number of nimble and eager young three- and four-year-olds. The following weekend, he was second to Looks Like Trouble, the Gold Cup winner, over fences at Down Royal. A week after that, he won a chase at Clonmel, and seven days later finished third in a hurdle at Fairyhouse.This is an awesome work-rate for a horse who, in human terms, is approaching his 50th birthday, but Dorans Pride seems to thrive on it “He just loves racing,” Hourigan says. “People might say, ‘why don’t you send him to Cheltenham fresh?’, but the best this horse has been this year was when he ran on all those weekends one after another.”Florida Pearl, another great long-standing feature of Irish jumping, is the favourite for Sunday’s race, followed by Nick Dundee and Native Upmanship, while Dorans Pride is an 8-1 chance. “That’s a big price for a horse who’s never been out of the first two in all his nine races at Leopardstown,” Hourigan says.

“He puts up a good performance every time he goes there and he’s already proved he’s got plenty of gears left by winning one of the top Flat handicaps in Ireland.”He’s still got a lot of speed between fences, as he proved in the Ericsson Chase at Christmas [when second to Rince Ri], but he just found the jumping a bit difficult because of the very soft ground. If he’d jumped well in that race, you’d have to wonder how far he would have won.”There is certainly a fine engine inside Dorans Pride’s relatively small frame, enough to carry him along in comfort against horses a fraction of his age. The decision to run in the November Handicap came after Hourigan rode Dorans Pride himself in a charity race at the Curragh, and was amazed at the energy he could feel through the reins.”It was a race over the straight mile for the Shane Broderick Appeal Fund,” he says, “and there were plenty of true mile horses in the race. I felt that I could be in front at any stage I pleased, all the way up the straight.”As well as three previous attempts at the Gold Cup, Dorans Pride was also successful in the Stayers’ Hurdle in 1995, and fell when in contention for the Royal & SunAlliance Hurdle a year earlier. He may be a 40-1 chance for the Gold Cup this time around, but Hourigan, with his mixture of faith, pride and loyalty, believes that his moment may yet arrive.”No other horse has held his form like my horse,” he says.

“It will be his fourth Gold Cup if he gets there, and his sixth Cheltenham, and he’s still got a live chance. There are some good horses in Sunday’s race, but they’ll respect me just as much as I’ll respect them. I’ve no doubt that he’ll win another big one before this season is out.”* The trainers Josh Gifford and Charlie Egerton are likely to receive fines at a meeting of the Jockey Club’s disciplinary committee today over the infamous doping cases of Lively Knight and Avanti Express. The samples taken from both horses contained the prohibited substance ACP.

Neither Gifford or Egerton are to attend the hearings and are expected to receive the minimum punishment.. The chase became harder for Ellen MacArthur yesterday as Michel Desjoyeaux lengthened his lead by 20 miles in the Vendée Globe race. The Frenchman claimed he has held a weapon in his armoury just for these circumstances, a headsail to power him upwind on the final stretches of the 25,000-mile race which has 2,700 miles to run to the finish in Les Sables d’Olonne. The chase became harder for Ellen MacArthur yesterday as Michel Desjoyeaux lengthened his lead by 20 miles in the Vendée Globe race. The Frenchman claimed he has held a weapon in his armoury just for these circumstances, a headsail to power him upwind on the final stretches of the 25,000-mile race which has 2,700 miles to run to the finish in Les Sables d’Olonne.
For MacArthur, this is the “autoroute”, after the bumpy country tracks of the Doldrums which first lifted her to an opportunity to contest the lead and then allowed Desjoyeaux to pick up the trade winds first and wriggle away.The man known as “Le Prof” has played the weather skilfully to his advantage and now has only to navigate the Azores high without being caught again to control the race from in front.The leading pair continue to hold off the challenge of Marc Thiercelin in third place and Roland Jourdain in fourth while, neck and neck in eighth and ninth places, two Britons, Josh Hall and Mike Golding were last night separated by just three miles.Grant Dalton was just 750 miles from the entrance to the Cook Strait and the half-way point of The Race. His 109ft catamaran, Club Med, is maintaining a 725-mile lead over Loick Peyron in Innovation Explorer.. The America’s Cup game is back on Britain’s sporting hit list after an absence of 14 years with the confirmation in London yesterday that a challenge for 2003 in Auckland is to be backed by Peter Harrison.