Russell helps hero Kelly punch above his weight
IF Noel Meade is an artiste in National Hunt circles, with Gold Cup runners on his gallops, Pat Kelly is an artisan who chisels out an existence with a handful of runners.
Yet from their respective Castletown and Craughwell yards, two roads converged on Cheltenham yesterday to telling effect.
First, Kelly picked off the Pertemps Handicap Hurdle for the second year in a row, with Presenting Percy (11/1), before Meade celebrated his first chase success at the Festival when Road To Respect (14/1) claimed the Plate.
For Kelly, the success carried echoes of 2016 when Mall Dini, in the same ownership of Philip Reynolds, and under the same pilot, Davy Russell, swooped from the next parish to win.
It was a similar story yesterday as Presenting Percy defied a welter weight of 11st 11lbs to win the €47,500 prize by a snug three and three-quarter lengths.
The reward will help pay a few bills as Kelly’s yard isn’t exactly flush with cash. ‘We’re only barely surviving. Adrian Maguire was man enough to come out and say it,’ he said.
While Kelly was chuffed, he couldn’t resist a swipe at the British handicapper for raising his horse in the weights. ‘If the handicapper was right, we shouldn’t have won the race today. He treats you like a dog.’
Kelly is a maverick character, who refused a post-race interview request from ITV and brushed off a colleague who approached with a hand microphone.
In contrast, owner Reynolds, the son of the late Taoiseach Albert, was more measured in victory.
‘Last year with Mall Dini went by in a blur. I want to take this one all in. It’s incredible to win this race for the second year running,’ he said.
‘Pat does things his way and he knows how to get the best out of horses even if only has a few.
‘He trains the old way, he keeps his horses off the gallops here and no one sits on them from the minute they get here. He has 15 horses at home and doesn’t want more than that.
‘My father would be enjoying this,’ added Reynolds. ‘He got great enjoyment out of horses but never had a runner here.’
Key to the victory was a canny ride from Russell, who extended his record of winning at every Festival since 2002 — a feat matched only by Ruby Walsh.
‘I felt he had to settle, with his weight and let his jumping get me into the race. I was taking that risk but on the drier ground, he jumped that bit better,’ said Russell, who hopped up on Kelly’s back in the winners’ enclosure afterwards.
‘Pat’s a very small trainer in a very small village in Ireland. He puts in an awful lot of time and effort. It’s great that someone of that calibre can reap the reward.’
Russell is now on 18 Festival winners and is level with Richard Dunwoody in sixth place on the all-time list.
Asked if it made up for his narrow loss on Whisper in the RSA Chase on Wednesday, he said: ‘I would have been a lucky winner. If I went through the week with no winner I wouldn’t have thought I should have won the RSA.’
In contrast to Kelly, Meade remains one of the heavy hitters of the jumps game, although his record at the Festival is modest and Road To Respect, ridden with confidence by Bryan Cooper, was only his fifth win.
‘I got a great kick out of that,’ he said. ‘It’s not the easiest place to win, not easy for anyone. I was keen on the RSA Chase but Eddie [O’Leary] said we’d got for this one and it worked out.’