Harry Eustace expresses unbridled joy after winning at Royal Ascot as a rookie trainer - saying 'I promise you we will celebrate'
Time For Sandals, his little three-year-old filly, had just completed the second part of week that, in all likelihood, has just transformed his career.
Winning a Group One at Royal Ascot, for a rookie trainer, could be dismissed as luck but to do it twice in the space of four days indicates serious talent.
Eustace had started the meeting that matters above all with a bang, when Docklands won the Queen Anne Stakes, but things got even better for the 37-year-old, who only started training in 2021; Time For Sandals might have been a 25/1 shot but she hit the line as powerfully as an odds-on favourite.
There was heartbreak for connections of 28/1 runner-up Arizona Blaze, who wondered what might have happened had they been drawn on the far side of the track with Time For Sandals, but none of that diluted the wonderment which consumed Eustace.
He's certainly bred for this job. His father, James, was an institution in Newmarket and won the 1998 Royal Hunt Cup here; his uncle, David Oughton, landed the Golden Jubilee Stakes in 2005, when Ascot was staged at York, from Hong Kong, where Harry's younger brother, David, now trains.
Having the genes is one thing, being able to performer is another. Eustace dropped out of Edinburgh University, where he was studying chemistry, to pursue his dream of training good horses and the last four days, unequivocally, have shown that was the right call.
'People are waiting for you to prove you can do it – and we have done it twice this week,' said Eustace, whose other runners at Ascot this week finished second and fifth. 'This is the big marquee meeting of the entire year. To win here is the greatest stage and it's enormous for us.
'I won't take any of it for granted. I have been very lucky growing up with Dad. But it's tough. This is a sport and an industry in which it is a marathon, not a sprint. You have to keep going.
'I promise you we will celebrate it because you never know if it's going to be a little while between drinks!'
This, in essence, is what it is all about: joy. Everywhere you looked, you could see what everyone is in this for: from Richard Kingscote, who partnered Time For Sandals, to Kieran Shoemark, who emerged from a period of turbulence to take the Sandringham Stakes on 22/1 shot Never Let Go.
'It has been a tough six weeks,' said Shoemark, who lost his job as one of John and Thady Gosden's main riders after losing on Field Of Gold in the 2000 Guineas.
'I had an opportunity that put me on the map and it is my job to remain there now.'
Staying on the map is something that Willie Mullins will never have to worry about but even this winning machine looked like he was savouring Ascot success for the first time (it was actually his eleventh win) when Ethical Diamond blitzed the field in the Duke Of Edinburgh Stakes.
Then, of course, there was Joseph Murphy, who sent out the 33/1 winner of the Coronation Stakes.
He and jockey Gary Carroll are pillars of this sport in Ireland, the kind of men who keep the wheels turning on a daily basis but rarely get the credit they deserve.
'It's a lifetime's ambition to have a Group One winner,' said Murphy, who is now 70.
'This is 50 years of work – that's what it is. It's love and care, and all for the owners we have, all our people. It's just a whole group of people together. This is heaven on earth.'
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The light can come through and that helps give it a shimmer. Visually, it comes alive a little bit in a way that a big static lump of steel wouldn't. I'm very pleased with how it came out. It seemed to capture the movement of the players quite well. A bit like football itself, it takes a lot of practice.' Unlike the vast majority of football statues, which are made with clay and cast in bronze, Scott's use of steel makes his work for City very distinctive – silvery, bright and almost futuristic in appearance. He believes this bold look worked in his favour. 'I think that's what caught the eye of Man City. It's such an unusual technique and it has a certain modernity to it. A contemporary feel that they really appreciated. When you go to the Etihad, they have a lot of structural galvanised steel there, so it suits the ethos and the aesthetic of the stadium very well,' says Scott. 'It was very demanding. Steelwork is physically very different. If you make a mistake in clay, you can just change it with your thumb. With steel, you need to chop it off with oxyacetylene. You need to grind it all back, get in behind it, redo it and reweld it. It's a very laborious process, which, if I'm honest, I underestimated, but I just had to work hard. We got there in the end.' Statues of Kompany and Silva were delivered to the same deadline. Both players had helped to transform City. They did so using different attributes, reflected in the way Scott chose to represent them. Kompany's pose shows him in a specific moment, after the final whistle blew on a vital 1-0 win over Leicester in his last home game for the club. The defender, renowned for his leadership skills and winning mentality, had scored the only goal to move City a step closer to retaining the Premier League title. 'He'd already decided he was leaving but he hadn't told anyone, so if you watch the game again, and you know that in the back of your mind, you can see that mixture of emotions as he's walking off,' says Scott. 'It was an incredible goal that he'd just scored. It was almost a poignant celebration. He had his head down and it was quite a contemplative pose. But with the arms outstretched it was almost messianic. It summed up that, for a while, he was Mr Manchester City.' Silva's pose was more traditional as Scott sought to reflect the midfielder's graceful movement and vision. 'I've caught him, with the ball at his foot, about to scoop it away. The way he played the game – looking two moves ahead – he was something else. I think they really appreciated that pose. He's quite upright and looking over in the distance the way that he did.' There was only one option when it came to Agüero – the shirt-twirling celebration after his injury-time winner against Queens Park Rangers to dramatically wrest the title away from Manchester United in 2012. But sculpture is about far more than just surface-level aesthetics. Statues need substance as much as style. 'We had to do some very clever thinking to make sure they would stand up, and be rigid enough to withstand any potential mishaps, yet make them look effortless. When you're doing public sculpture, you've always got to think, 'What if?' It didn't really cross my mind that anyone would want to vandalise them – football fans show a lot of respect for sculptures, even at opposing teams' stadiums – I was more concerned that someone might hang a scarf around them or climb on them in a moment of joy.' With the statues of Silva and Agüero, both players only have one foot on the ground, which has to support a lot of weight above. 'We had to do some quite serious structural work with steel tubes concealed inside the ankles. The base plate is a marvel of engineering but that's all hidden underneath. Those two especially presented quite considerable technical challenges,' says Scott. The biggest test of all is impossible to prepare for. Football incites strong emotions: supporters feel protective of their club and how they're perceived. As a result, any statue has to satisfy a demanding audience. On some occasions, even the subject themselves. If the slightest shortcoming is perceived, it's liable to be ruthlessly exploited by rival fans on social media. 'You're capturing someone's life – what they meant to that club, those fans and their families – with your own hands. It's an incredible gift to be given, but a big responsibility. It can mess with your head a little bit if you think about it too much,' says Scott. 'I understand the passion. I've been to a lot of games in my time. I totally get it. It puts a lot of pressure on you, and football fans can be a fickle bunch. For every 99 people who think your work's great, there'll be one who really hates it. There's nothing you can do; you're never going to please everyone.' He admits that time is often the ultimate judge. 'Once these big public sculptures have been unveiled, a measure of their success is that they fall into the collective ownership of the public. They become part of the community, the building or the setting they inhabit. Oftentimes, people won't even think about who made it. If they're successful, it's as if they've always been there.' This is an article from Nutmeg magazine Follow Nutmeg on Facebook and Substack
