yesterday’s hero
Graham Buddry looks back at the career of the great Irish hurdler
Graham Buddry remembers the career of the great Hurricane Fly
There is no doubt that a lot of Irish Grade 1 events are far removed from the class they are meant to be. Often beset with very small fields dominated by just one decent runner or the same small fields choked with most runners lining up for only one trainer or owner. Unfortunately, in a lot of cases this makes a mockery of form lines and can blow very average performers up into something they clearly are not.
There is, however, one supremely outstanding exception that defied the nay-sayers and vindicated those who believed in him. The horse in question is Hurricane Fly.
Bought from France by George Creighton he was sent to Willie Mullins in Ireland and made an immediate impression. A maiden hurdle at the Punchestown Festival of 2008 saw Ruby Walsh quicken his mount to the front two out and speed clear in a matter of a few strides to pass the post a full 12 lengths ahead of the next finisher.
Hurricane Fly’s next two race were back in France at Auteuil where he met top French hurdler Grivette, winning the first and placing second in the other when the weights favoured the French horse. Interestingly, the third placed horse that day was Quevega and while this indomitable mare would also go on to better things, Hurricane Fly would only be beaten twice in more than the next five and a half years! The 2008/09 season kicked off for Hurricane Fly on November 30 at Fairyhouse when, ridden by Paul Townend, he landed his first Grade 1 event, the Royal Bond Novice Hurdle. A month later and the Future Champions Novice Hurdle at Leopardstown was won with ease by ten lengths.
Bypassing the Cheltenham Festival, Hurricane Fly had his third and final run of the season when winning the Champion Novice Hurdle at the Punchestown Festival by an impressive seven lengths. This was his third consecutive Grade 1 victory but the bubble was dented rather than burst in his first run of the new season.
In need of the run, Hurricane Fly finished third to an underestimated horse in Solwhit. Although later to prove imperious over longer distances, most notably when running away with the World Hurdle at the Cheltenham Festival, for now Solwhit was a top class two mile specialist.
His last race had been at the Punchestown Festival some months earlier where he beat a field which included Punjabi, Quevega, Sizing Europe and Hardy Eustace when winning the Champion Hurdle there. For Hurricane Fly now to have his own colours lowered by such as Solwhit was far from a disgrace, but what followed from there was amazing.
Bypassing Cheltenham again, Hurricane Fly next raced in the Punchestown Champion Hurdle. In the meantime Solwhit, the defending champion, had won the Irish Champion Hurdle without coming off the bridle. Here they had a battle royal in the closing stages as Hurricane Fly won by a neck.
With just five races in two seasons Hurricane Fly was still flying under many people’s radar but in each of his first three races of the 2010/11 season Hurricane Fly won with Solwhit in second place. First, he asserted in the closing stages to win the Hattons Grace by a length. Next was an impressive two-length margin and that was followed by a comfortable victory by nearly twice that distance in the Irish Champion Hurdle. As said before, many top Irish races can be very poor affairs and some still doubted the form of beating the same horses time and again, even if by further and easier each time.
The fact that one of these was Solwhit was missed by all bar the growing Hurricane Fly fan club. And so, with many crabbing the form, Hurricane Fly made his first appearance in England at the Cheltenham Festival.
The Champion Hurdle quickly became a match race at the sharp end as the other protagonists fell away soon after half way to leave the Northern horse, Peddlers Cross, the only challenger. Unbeaten in all his previous eight races, including the thrashing of Binocular and co. in the Fighting Fifth, Peddlers Cross wasn’t going down without one hell of a fight. Unfortu-
nately for him Hurricane Fly was a scrapper of the first order and, having taken a slight lead at the last, he slowly extended it to just over a length by the line to be crowned the new king of the hurdlers.
To emphasise his authority in the division, Hurricane Fly returned to Punchestown around six weeks later to thrash a useful field and retain that Champion Hurdle title as well.
It would then be 268 days before Hurricane Fly ran again. Towards the end of January he made his debut in the 2011/12 season a winning one as he comfortably retained the Irish Champion Hurdle. Next up would be another trip to Cheltenham.
Meanwhile the 2010 Champion Hurdler, Binocular, who had been unable to defend his title the following year, was sweeping all before him. His own warm-up for the big clash was an emphatic win in the Kingwell Hurdle at Wincanton following a second victory in the Christmas Hurdle at Kempton where he just got the better of Rock on Ruby with Overturn a further eight lengths back in third.
The Champion Hurdle was seen by most as a match race between champions past and present with Hurricane Fly and Binocular the only two considered in the betting. This race proved to be one of the poorer rides by both Ruby Walsh and AP McCoy as they, too, ignored all the other runners while playing their own game of cat and mouse.
In the end Hurricane Fly proved too strong for Binocular but their exaggerated tactics backfired badly when Rock on Ruby and Overturn, both returned at double figure odds, slipped the big two. By the time Walsh and McCoy realised what was going on it was too late and the front pair were beyond recall. If the race were run again there is little doubt Hurricane Fly would have prevailed. Stung by this reverse, Hurricane Fly returned to Punchestown to win their Champion Hurdle for the third time but it seemed scant consolation.
Another season and Hurricane Fly would contest five races, warming up for the one that mattered most with a bloodless victory followed by an impressive win in top company and then a stroll against equally good opposition when winning the Irish Champion Hurdle for the third time.
Cheltenham on 12 March 2013 was the day Hurricane Fly finally achieved the full acclaim and status he so richly deserved. The Champion Hurdle saw Rock on Ruby take a creditable second place to prove his own worth yet he had no chance with the
winner as Hurricane Fly joined the legendary Comedy of Errors as the only horses to regain the Champion Hurdle crown.
A perfect five from five for the season followed next month with a fourth success in the Punchestown Champion Hurdle with Rock on Ruby among those left toiling behind. This was Hurricane Fly’s 16th Grade One victory and equalled the world record held jointly by Kauto Star and the American horse John Henry.
It would take just one more race at the start of the next season for Hurricane Fly to claim the record outright.
Two more Grade 1 victories included a fourth Irish Champion Hurdle before Cheltenham. Now ten years old, Hurricane Fly found time catching up on him as he faded in the closing stages to finish fourth, the first time over hurdles he had not run in the first three. Jezki took the spoils that day and then beat our hero into second place in the Punchestown Champion Hurdle.
Far from being the end, Hurricane Fly bounced back in the 2014/15 season and put Jezki firmly in his place not once or twice but in all three of his pre-Cheltenham races, the last of which was his fifth Irish Champion Hurdle and twenty-second Grade One victory. It would prove to be his last.
Jezki again finished behind Hurricane Fly at Cheltenham where the eleven year old took a fantastic third place to the applause from the crowds behind the new unbeaten king of the division, Faugheen.
Faugheen looked extra special and there was little hope that Hurricane Fly would get the better of him at such an advanced age, so while Faugheen was winning the Punchestown Champion Hurdle in fine style Hurricane Fly was given a first race at three miles in Punchestown’s World Series Hurdle, far further than he had ever run before.
The seven-year-old Jezki was also having his first run over the distance and they filled the first two places but Jezki claimed the spoils.
Hurricane Fly would run just once more, back in France at Auteuil, yet strangely over even further. It would be the only time he would not finish in the first four.
Retired after that with 24 victories from 32 races over hurdles, three times runner up, thrice third, once fourth and only once unplaced. Twice the Champion Hurdler and five times Irish Champion Hurdler, Hurricane Fly was unbeaten in ten races at Leopardstown and claimed a world record of twenty two Grade 1 victories.
With Istabraq before and Faugheen afterwards, Hurricane Fly is perhaps not as revered as his exceptional talents deserve, yet at his peak it could be argued he was the best of the lot.