Former Premier League manager Harry Redknapp was celebrating a special present on Boxing Day after his horse The Jukebox Man raced to victory in one of England’s most-famous jumps races, the King George VI Chase at Kempton Park.<\/p>\n
The race \u2014 a Group One run over three miles (4,800 metres) and 18 fences \u2014 produced one of the all-time great finishes, with four horses battling it out virtually neck-and-neck down the straight over the last two fences before a three-way photo finish.<\/p>\n
The Jukebox Man, trained by Ben Pauling and ridden by Ben Jones, was called a nose in front of second-place finisher Banbridge, with Gaelic Warrior third.<\/p>\n
“That’s a dream, and to have a horse that good is unbelievable. I love the game, to come here on King George Day and just run made me so proud, but to have the winner is special,” said Redknapp, a former FA Cup-winning manager.<\/p>\n
“What a race he has run and he jumped unbelievable.”<\/p>\n
The Jukebox Man was behind pacesetter Il Est Francais for much of the race and took the lead before the final bend.<\/p>\n
Four horses had the chance to win at the final fence, including last year’s winner Banbridge, Gaelic Warrior and Jango Baie.<\/p>\n
The Kempton Park crowd roared them home, and connections of The Jukebox Man were elated after he made a late lunge for the line to get his nose in front.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
There was nothing in it right to the line as The Jukebox Man (centre) beat Banbridge (right) and Gaelic Warrior (left). (Getty Images: Alan Crowhurst)<\/p>\n
“It really is the moment where you score the winning goal in the cup final with a minute to go,” Pauling said.<\/p>\n
“It’s as tight as it gets, and I had no idea how we got on. The cameras thought he won, but I didn’t want to believe it until I heard that tannoy.<\/p>\n
“It’s something very special and Harry has been an exceptional owner for me and we’ve always had a huge amount of luck. I’ve always had huge faith in this horse and so has Harry as well.”<\/p>\n
Redknapp, a big personality well known for his quips and one-liners, managed Premier League clubs including West Ham, Portsmouth and Tottenham during a long career. He won the FA Cup as manager of Portsmouth in 2008.<\/p>\n
AP\/ABC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Premier League manager Harry Redknapp was celebrating a special present on Boxing Day after his horse The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":373868,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[64,63,201996,197584,98551,596,201997,201995,153199,201993,201992,35485,7887,822,588,85,201994],"class_list":["post-373867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-banbridge","tag-ben-jones","tag-fa-cup","tag-football","tag-gaelic-warrior","tag-harry-redknapp","tag-jockey","tag-kempton-park","tag-king-george-vi-chase","tag-manager","tag-owner","tag-racing","tag-sport","tag-sports","tag-the-jukebox-man"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=373867"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373867\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/373868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=373867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=373867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=373867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}