When Poniros, trained by Willie Mullins, swept home in this year’s Triumph Hurdle as the first 100-1 Cheltenham Festival winner since Norton’s Coin won the Gold Cup in 1990, one of the very few people who had backed him was my regular racing companion Derek, known in this column as the Form Guru. His successes are normally a reward for rising before the dawn-chorus blackbirds have gulped their first worm and ploughing through the stats for a horse which had possibly shown a glimmer of form on a wet Thursday at Uttoxeter the April before last. But with Poniros there was no form. Not the merest trace.
The ex-inmate of Ralph Beckett’s Flat racing yard had never jumped a single hurdle in public. So how had Derek picked him? It turned out that the Guru’s fallback in such circumstances is to lob a few quid at the bookies first time out on horses which have cost significant sums to acquire – and Harold Kirk, Willie Mullins’s chief sourcer, had paid £200,000 for Poniros, a son of the Derby winner Golden Horn.
I guess there are worse strategies and I wouldn’t want to spoil the Guru’s fun (he got130-1 with Betfair), but in simple fairness to us ordinary punters, shouldn’t the regulations insist that before a horse can contest a championship event like the Triumph, it must have run at least once over jumps? Willie Mullins is a brilliant trainer, probably the best ever. All credit to him for equalling his own record by training ten Festival winners again this year – more than all the trainers in England, Wales and Scotland combined – but surely racing’s market economy has gone crazy when one trainer is able to play the numbers game to the extent Mullins did in fielding no fewer than 11 runners in the Triumph.
Of the many special moments at this year’s Cheltenham, the standout victories were those for Marine Nationale and Jazzy Matty: the two horses whose previous Festival victories had launched the tragically short career of Michael O’Sullivan, the talented young jockey who died from his injuries in a fall at Thurles shortly before this year’s event. Perhaps the most eloquent of the many tributes paid to O’Sullivan came from jockey Jonjo O’Neill Jnr after his win on Poniros. He clearly has his father’s way with words: one of the most memorable experiences of my racing life was when writing a history of the Festival I listened to Jonjo Snr relive his famous Gold Cup victory on Dawn Run: every hoofbeat, every intake of breath was still there in his memory.
Those bold souls who note this column’s Twelve to Follow have a Gold Cup winner to celebrate
But it is the little quirks of fate which make the Festival too. Jonjo Jnr had planned to go to Doncaster before his agent called him to say the ride on Mullins’s Poniros was available: Jonjo Snr had been the under-bidder for Poniros at the sales. Then there was J.P. McManus revealing how his Gold Cup winner Inothewayurthinkin, trained by Gavin Cromwell and bred by J.P.’s wife Noreen, might never have come into existence. J.P. had once sought to buy Walk In The Park for his racing string. Had he succeeded, the horse would immediately have been gelded – but Walk In The Park failed the vet’s inspection and fortunately retained his wedding tackle. Now he’s a Gold Cup sire.
Regular readers will know that pre-Cheltenham I had been sitting comfortably on a 33-1 bet for Inothewayurthinkin, then the 7-1 favourite for Aintree, to win the Grand National. But J.P. surprised most of the racing world by stumping up £25,000 for him to contest the Gold Cup against the supposedly unbeatable Galopin Des Champs. J.P. and Gavin were proven absolutely right in their bold gamble as Inothewayurthinkin won the Gold Cup on merit and was then scratched from Aintree. My Grand National betslip is now in the shredder, but I can hardly complain after collecting at 15-2 on the each-way bet I felt forced to have on him at Cheltenham, and those bold souls who note this column’s Twelve to Follow have had a Gold Cup winner to celebrate.
We had more good news last Saturday. It is a measure of the Irish domination at Cheltenham in recent years that a trainer as talented as the Gloucestershire-based Fergal O’Brien is still awaiting his first Festival winner. I usually include one of his team in the Twelve because Fergal has the gift of spreading joy with his victories. He and former stable jockey Paddy Brennan, now running a racing syndicate, had a long and fruitful partnership and when the mare Leloopa showed promise running for Paddy’s partnership, I included her in the Twelve.
At Kelso on Saturday, coolly ridden by the 5lb claimer Tom Broughton, Leloopa came home eight lengths clear of her rivals to collect a £100,000 handicap hurdle at a tasty 22-1. Then Fergal’s Is This For Real won the bumper under Liam Harrison. The beaming trainer also was at Newbury where Siog Geal and John Barbour, both ridden by Brennan’s now well-bedded-in replacement Jonny Burke, added two more victories. He’s got a decent team of jockeys too.
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