WHEN fashion brand consultant Isabel Spearman won the 10-furlong charity race at Newbury in May last season, she declared it the best day of her life.
“Better than your wedding day?” asked Stan, the lad leading her back to the parade ring.
“Yes!” she said.
“Better than having children?”
“Yes!” she insisted.
Her ecstasy was partly because it was unexpected. When she lined up for a previous charity race in 2021, the Magnolia Cup at Goodwood, she was on the highest-rated horse.
“I thought, ‘It’s my race to win,”’ she says.
They finished second-last and although the horse didn’t run to form, she “cried for a week thinking I’d screwed it up and I swore that I’d do it again”.
This time, she lowered her expectations (with a smidgen of hope that she might win) and stormed home by five lengths, leaving whippersnappers such as Jaydon Lee (day
