The trainer of Gold Cup legend Best Mate has returned, posing for selfies and working out how to use Instagram
Selfies were not really a thing when Henrietta Knight handed in her trainer’s licence back in 2012, but they come with the territory for a modern racing celebrity and she was stopped by several eager fans on the short walk from the paddock to the grandstand at Wincanton on Friday. “I still don’t know how to do them,” she said later. “I don’t know anything about those sort of things. When I first started training, I used to go around with a big telephone with an antennae. If I’d kept it, I could probably have sold it for a bit of money.”
A big bear hug from James Bowen, her runner’s jockey, in the paddock before the race was also a departure from the usual pre-race protocols. On a day when National Hunt racing welcomed back one of its most familiar and popular figures of recent decades, however, it felt entirely appropriate.