EASY TIGER
National hero stars as Irish claim St Patrick’s Day parade of winners
Tiger Roll and Keith Donoghue clear the last hurdle on the way to a record-equalling fifth Cheltenham Festival victory
EDDIE O’LEARY has insisted there are no regrets about pulling Tiger Roll out of next month’s Randox Grand National despite the best-known steeplechaser in training romping to an 18-length victory in the Glenfarclas Cross Country Chase yesterday.
After his commanding win from Easysland, bookmakers were united in saying that the dual Grand National winner would be disputing favouritism for the famous steeplechase at Aintree on April 10, had he not been scratched from it at the start of the month amid the furore surrounding the picture of his trainer Gordon Elliott sitting on a dead horse.
Yesterday’s win will go down in the record books alongside the name of Denise Foster, who has temporarily taken over the licence at Elliott’s stable while he serves a six-month suspension.
O’Leary is racing manager to his brother Michael, the boss of Ryanair, and the duo pulled Tiger Roll out of the Grand National because they objected to him being given a weight of 11st 9lb.
Yesterday’s performance makes that a hard argument to sustain, but there was no sign that the O’Learys will let it go.
Eddie O’Leary said: ‘What a fantastic horse, we’re over the moon. He’s a legend of a horse. Aintree is off the agenda and we’ve no regrets about that. Both him and Easysland are rated too high.
‘It’s going to be hard to retire him after that and he loves racing in any case.’
Tiger Roll was recording an amazing fifth Cheltenham Festival win, equalling the feat of the legendary Golden Miller, who took the Gold Cup for five consecutive years (1932-36).
The only horse with more wins at the Festival is the Willie Mullinstrained Quevega, who won the Mares’ Hurdle six times. But the feat achieved by Tiger Roll is amplified by the fact that his victories have come in three different races — the Triumph Hurdle (2014), National Hunt Chase (2017) and Cross Country Chase (2018, 2019 and 2021) — in seven Festival runs.
It was a first win for Tiger Roll since his 2019 Grand National victory and ended a winless fiverace sequence which had included a 17-length defeat by Easysland in last season’s Cross Country Chase. Among those runs were displays which led to questions about whether he retained an appetite for racing.
That could not be doubted as jockey Keith Donoghue noticeably raced him close to the pace yesterday.
‘We said we’d change the tactics with him and he really came alive,’ said Donoghue.
‘I was in control of the race after halfway. When Tiger Roll is on a going day, it takes a very good horse to beat him.’
On a St Patrick’s Day when the Irish won six of the seven races, Henry de Bromhead’s 2020 Arkle winner Put The Kettle On made it four wins from four runs at Cheltenham with a half-length win in the Queen Mother Champion Chase from Nube Negra, with odds-on favourite Chacun Pour Soi a length further back in third.
Willie Mullins-trained Monkfish is 5-1 for next year’s Gold Cup after a six-length win in the Brown Advisory Novices’ Chase, despite a couple of heart-stopping jumping errors.