Storylines abound in Friday’s Boodles Cheltenham Gold Cup although none comes close to the redemptive quality of Charlie Deutsch’s tale should the English jockey with the German name win on the very French-sounding L’Homme Presse.
In March 2018, after a night out at a Cheltenham club, the then 21-year-old Deutsch was stopped in his Audi A4 by police. It took him six goes to blow into a breathalyser and he failed the test. It was at that point he made a fateful decision.
He ran back to his car and sped off. During the subsequent near 8km pursuit he reached speeds of up to 180kph, driving the wrong way around a roundabout before the car was eventually stopped by a stinger strip.
Two months later the sober and hugely remorseful young rider pleaded guilty to dangerous driving while over the drink-drive limit and escaping police custody. His punishment was a 10-months jail sentence. Deutsch served 2½ months in Bristol prison.
“You can’t really describe it but it’s very hard,” he subsequently told the London Times of his prison experience. “You read newspaper articles saying it’s a bit of a picnic or whatever, but it’s not at all – not that I expected it to be. It’s pretty uncomfortable, as it should be.
“I don’t think I’ll ever forget the first night. It was just scary. You’re not sure what’s going to happen. I just thought to myself, ‘Keep calm and keep a lid on it’,” he added.
If racing fell steeply down his immediate list of priorities, he couldn’t be blamed for fretting that an emerging career riding, principally for trainer Venetia Williams, was over before it had properly begun.
A month before the incident he had won the biggest pot of his career on Yala Enki in a Grand National Trial. Staring down the barrel of personal disgrace, professional anonymity was a real fear too.
During the trial Deutsch’s lawyer had described his client as a “sensible young man” who had “done something remarkably stupid”. After he emerged from jail, Williams adopted a similar attitude.
“I didn’t expect anything from her. She knew that I knew it was wrong and I was very remorseful for it. She was understanding in the sense that what has been done is done, I’m going to face the punishment, and that’s that.
“She has been great in supporting me and understanding, in a way, that just moving on is the solution,” he said.
Deutsch has conspicuously made the most of his second chance, and L’Homme Presse has been central to his career resurgence.
The French-bred delivered a first Grade One success in the Scilly Isles Chase and secured his rider a career highlight with success at the 2022 Cheltenham Festival in the Brown Advisory.
It stamped him a future Gold Cup contender and, if subsequently getting unseated at the last in the King George left his rider red-faced, Deutsch had learned the hard way there are worse things than embarrassment.
Much worse was how injury kept L’Homme Presse off the track for over a year before a successful return to action at Lingfield in January. A subsequent Grade One defeat over an inadequate trip and quicker than ideal ground at Ascot hasn’t dissuaded those who believe the horse is the home team’s best ‘Blue Riband’ defence.
It isn’t Williams’s style to hype her horses and she is keen, after getting L’Homme Presse back from over a year off, to stress that the season doesn’t end after this week.
“The Gold Cup is the holy grail, but it takes a super horse to win that, and I hope we go there with a chance,” she said.
Deutsch has ridden Royale Pagaille in the last three Gold Cups. He’s a good horse, a Grade One winner in his own right this season, but one ideally suited by very testing conditions. L’Homme Presse likes the mud too, but looks to possess a level of class to make him a legitimate contender.
It makes for an exciting prospect if you’re the rider on his back, one eager to seal his reputation as top-class jockey and a person of considerable resilience.
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