IRISH EYES ARE SMILING
ST Patrick’s Thursday, they called yesterday. Make it Shamrock Week. This green and pleasant fold in the Cotswolds may be as English as afternoon tea, but it is being annexed by Ireland’s racing visitors this springtime.
By the end of the penultimate day’s programme, the scoreboard recording the predictable Irish trouncing of the British read like a rugby result: 15-6.
It was 6-1 on the day, an unprecedented clean sweep having been narrowly averted in the last race.
Michael O’Leary did not even require his lucky jacket to win the feature race, the one he and his budget airline sponsor, the Ryanair Chase. His horses had finished runners-up on four previous occasions, but yesterday his wife handed over the silverware he had paid for when Balko Des Flos ran out a strong winner.
The trainer was Henry de Bromhead and the jockey Davy Russell. Of where? Ireland and Ireland, of course.
So it was all afternoon. Willie Mullins had two winners, including Penhill in the Sun Bets Stayers’ Hurdle, to become the most successful trainer in Festival history, with 61 wins, one ahead of Nicky Henderson. Gordon Elliott registered three triumphs — his second hat-trick in successive days.
As for O’Leary, his Ryanair victory by four- and- a- half lengths over defending champion Un De Sceaux completed a treble following earlier victories by Shattered Love in the RSA Chase and Delta Work in the Pertemps Final. The sponsor- cumvictor said: ‘It’s taken me 15 years to win this bloody race, so I’m going to enjoy it. I’m going to get seriously drunk upstairs in the next couple of hours.
‘Every year Ryanair bring about 20,000 people to Cheltenham, though return bookings are a bit down on Friday as a lot are staying to go to Twickenham for the Six Nations match.’
What a turnaround it has been for the Irish over the last few years, from the nadir of just four winners between 1987 and 1990. Now it is almost monotonously stacked their way, with a record 19 winners last year. And now this year’s avalanche.
We would run up the white flag here if it were not for our own St George in the shape of Nicky Henderson, whose Might Bite carries our national esteem into today’s Gold Cup.
Ireland simply has the spending power in the horse market. Owners with pockets as deep as JP McManus, Rich Ricci and Jared Sullivan (who is now concentrating his ownership interests in Ireland after a split with Paul Nicholls) mean they can buy the best young talent.
So was there any sign of British pluck? We l l , there was victory in the seventh race, the Fulke Walwyn Kim Muir Challenge Cup in the shape of Missed Approach, trained by Warren Greatrex of Upper Lambourn. Praise be.
And O’Leary pointed away from racing for more balm. ‘I think all this winning here is bad for the rugby,’ he said of Ireland’s chances tomorrow. ‘ The English will probably take revenge bitterly.’