Resplendent Grey seals golden season for Sean Bowen

Resplendent Grey was an appropriate winner of the bet365 Gold Cup for new champion jockey Sean Bowen and chief supporter Olly Murphy.

Murphy has provided Bowen with over 100 winners as the Welshman secured a first title, and it was apt the two took out the last major handicap of the season together.

Bowen has made a name for himself for winning from unpromising positions and this was another one.

While Resplendent Grey travelled better than he had done all season in first-time cheekpieces, he was still flat out as Rachael Blackmore cruised to the front on Lombron.

However, with Bowen, who heads off for his stag party in Tenerife on Sunday, still in striking distance after jumping the last, there appeared to be an inevitability about the result and the 9-2 chance won by a length.

Given Willie Mullins was second, third, fourth and fifth with Lombron, High Class Hero, Spanish Harlem and Grangeclare West, he was confirmed as champion trainer for a second successive year.

Murphy said: “That was brilliant. I told him I wasn’t going on his stag do yesterday but I might go now!

“What can I say to top today off, for Sean more importantly, today is his day. I’ve been a small cog in his wheel, I’m very proud of him and he’s been a massive part of Warren Chase.

“I’m an emotional man when I’m happy, I always have been. There’s a big team behind me and a big team behind Sean. Andrew Thornton (Gold Cup-winning jockey) does an awful lot with him, I’m just a small part but he’s champion jockey and just won a big race, so it’s brilliant.

“You have to pinch yourself sometimes, I’m very hard on myself. I text Sean this morning to say ‘I’m sorry I haven’t given him a Grade One winner this year’ but that was great.”

Bowen told ITV Racing: “That’s amazing, it’s been the best two weeks of my life and I hope it carries on forever!

“To have my family here is great but I’ve got to give a big mention to Olly Murphy, how someone has kept his horses in that good a form all season I’ll never know.

“He’s got a 25 per cent strike-rate which is unheard of really and 56 per cent of the horses he has run have won which is also unheard of, so he’s doing something right.”