Desert Orchid
IT started as it would end eight years later, with Desert Orchid lying prostrate on the Kempton turf after a crashing fall.
On his 70th and final outing the popular grey fell heavily in the 1991 King George VI Chase. The nation held its breath until Desert Orchid rose quickly, unhurt and ushered straight into retirement. But that fall on his racecourse debut was something else entirely. He’d run himself legless when he barely got airborne at the final flight. Then he lay down for what seemed like an eternity.
“At that time his enthusiasm outweighed his technique and his experience,” relates Desert Orchid’s trainer, David Elsworth, in his soft, West Country lilt. “When he turned over, it looked serious.”
The tell-tale green screens hoisted around him seemed to tell their own story.
“When I saw the screens, I started walking towards where he was lying,” Elsworth continues, “and when I was 50 yards away, the bugger suddenly got up. Turned out he was only winded, but what a tragedy that would have been. Nobody would have heard of him.”
That near-calamity on his debut was emblematic of Desert Orchid’s early years. He was headstrong and impulsive at home, and it nearly cost him dearly. Yet under Elsworth’s intuitive eye and exercise rider Rodney Boult’s supple hands, he would evolve into the most charismatic
