2005

IT was a 3am fear made real in mid-afternoon. Sometimes it was all Henrietta Knight could do to watch Best Mate in action. Like a parent waving goodbye at the school gates for the first time, she hoped, rather than believed, that everything would be alright. For a time it was, until finally, at Exeter on Wednesday, it wasn’t. Her champion, a triple Gold Cup winner and unquestionably the most popular horse to have raced in this country since Desert Orchid, collapsed and died.