After Christmas Day – trained by Aidan O’Brien and jockeyed by Ronan Whelan – pulled away in the final stages of the race before storming home to win, the Crystal Palace Park Trust wrote on social media: “What just happened? The park’s time capsule prophecy came true.”
Smalls added: “It definitely was spooky. To find the time capsule, and then just the way everything was linking up – everything just fell into place. It was unbelievable.”
The note was found in April by a Romanian construction worker whose name – Craciun – means ‘Christmas’ in English.
Marius Craciun Dorin described the coincidence as “crazy”.
To add to the mystery, Tempiah said: “One of the sons of one of the founders of the museum, who’s passed away, actually works for the man that owns the horse.”
Tempiah said the trust had been trying to track down descendants of the note’s author, believed to be P Nugent Paterson, although some deciphered the signature as ‘P Wright Paterson’.
Anyone with any information is asked to get in touch with the park trust, external.
Tempiah added the trust was planning to bury its own time capsule to include a “letter, some money and encouragement to do exactly the same”.