Mouse isn’t quiet about chances of mining Gold
M“I don’t take horses over to Cheltenham for the fresh air”
ORE than 80 years after his mother helped sink the Bismarck, Mouse Morris seeks to scuttle Galopin Des Champs in today’s Gold Cup with his bonny grey warship, Gentlemansgame.
It’s a tall order but Morris has executed a daring raid or two in his time and few trainers are better at prepping for the big day on National Hunt’s high seas.
‘It’s very hard to see the favourite beaten but take him out and our grey horse wouldn’t be the worst of them. It’s a very bunched Gold Cup this year,’ he observed.
After Gentlemansgame lowered the sails of Bravemansgame in the Charlie Hall Chase at Wetherby, he missed the Savills Chase at Leopardstown with a minor foot issue and deliberately bypassed the Dublin Racing Festival.
‘He’s in great form, touch wood, I don’t usually run horses between Christmas and Cheltenham. That’s always been the way I’ve worked it.
‘My fellow is an out-and-out stayer. He was about 90 per cent at Wetherby — pretty ready. Cheltenham and the hill should suit — hopefully he is only getting going up the hill.
‘I was very hopeful from the start he was going to be very good but he’s had his problems along the way. He’s had growing pains. I’ve a lot of patience with horses, maybe not with people but definitely horses,’ he grinned.
‘As long as they go straight down to the winner’s enclosure when they come back into the parade ring after a race then it’s grand.
‘There is nothing worse than turning right coming back. Turning right is the loneliest place in Cheltenham.
‘I think I’ve as good a chance as anything in the race bar Galopin Des Champs — I think we’re as good as the rest. I don’t like taking them over for the fresh air, that’s for sure.’
Morris famously saddled War Of Attrition to win the Gold Cup in 2006, which he ranks as a career high.
‘Conor (O’Dwyer) and that horse got on like a house on fire. I was sh ***** g’ myself that day. I’d have had a good few fags, I’ll tell you that,’ he recalled.
When O’Dwyer had won the Gold Cup on Imperial Call ten years before in 1996, Morris joined him for a night out as he reckoned it was as close as he was going to get to ever winning the race.
Today’s pilot Darrragh O’Keeffe reminds him of O’Dwyer.
‘He’s like Conor was on War Of Attrition, they were a unit. He’s riding winners. He’s riding full of confidence and he’s got a very good raceriding brain. I wouldn’t give the ride to anyone else at the minute.’
Morris has a lifetime’s association with Cheltenham, having served his apprenticeship with Frenchie Nicholson, who trained locally. ‘His place was across from where the water jump is.’
An accomplished jockey, and winner of the Champion Chase twice with Skymas in 1976 and 1977, Morris never got to ride in the Gold Cup. ‘There were fewer Irish horses running in the race then and Irish jockeys weren’t in demand as they are now,’ he said. As a trainer, Morris saddled Buck House, Trapper John, War Of Attrition and First Lieutenant to Festival successes before sending out Rule The World to win the National in 2016. ‘I’d love to win the Grand National again. I don’t remember too much of the one I won,’ he said wryly. Morris has sent a small team to the Cotswolds this week. Franciscan Rock ran creditably to finish fifth in the Coral Cup but Foxy Jacks was a victim of the abandoned Cross-Country Chase, a decision Morris was dead set against.
If Gentlemansgame cracks the Gold Cup code, the feat would rival the crack encryption work of his late mother, Sheila Dunlop, at Bletchley Park during the Second World War.
“I don’t remember much of the Grand National I won”
‘She didn’t single-handedly sink the Bismarck but she was in Hut 6. Under the Official Secrets Act she wasn’t allowed talk about her work. Whatever she did, she got an MBE for it,’ chuckled Morris.
Might Morris receive the Freedom of Fethard in Tipperary if he torpedoes the Gold Cup’s elite? Stranger things have happened in racing.
Whatever the outcome, he is wound up to be part of the biggest stage of all. ‘You live for days like this,’ he said.