BLIND patriotism can lead to spiritual impoverishment, and on the racecourse it generally isn’t much of a help to the finances either. But national loyalty has done the Irish no harm in the betting ring at the Cheltenham Festival lately.
They can claim, of course, that theirs is a clear-sighted allegiance. Proof that chauvinist emotion hasn’t been deluding them into over-estimating their contenders at jump racing’s greatest meeting was dramatically provided when horses from across the water won 14 of the 27 races in 2013 and 12 last March.
The assault force assembled for the four days of the Festival this week looks at least as powerful and the bulk of the fancied runners will, as has become usual, travel from one stable, the Co Carlow yard of Willie Mullins. In recent seasons Mullins has translated domination of the National Hunt scene in Ireland into a formidable challenge each spring at Cheltenham, where he has emerged as leading trainer in three of the past four years.
As he prepares to launch a huge band of horses at the 2015 prizes, he is 7-1 on with Ladbrokes to top the trainers’ rankings again. The alliance with his countryman Ruby Walsh underpins the great rider’s position as 9-4 on favourite to secure the Festival jockeys’ title for a ninth time. Walsh’s aggregate of winners (41) already outstrips by 10 the total of his nearest rival in the history of the meeting. Obviously, the 35-year-old forms the ideal combination with Mullins. It was the same with Somerset-based Paul Nicholls when a hefty share of Walsh’s services assisted the Englishman to become leading trainer at Cheltenham six times between 2004 and 2010.
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Nicholls’s splendid record and that of Nicky Henderson (whose 51 successes at the Festival easily surpass anybody else’s accumulation) are reminders that England’s National Hunt racing has plenty of big guns to put the Irish cavalry under fire once hostilities start on Tuesday. The home side, defined for betting purposes as Great Britain, are 3-1 on to saddle more winners than the invaders. Yet, whatever is accomplished in the next few days by the master trainers Nicholls and Henderson and some gifted compatriots, one of the most vibrant atmospheres in sport will be pervasively flavoured by the Irish.
Their informed enthusiasm, exuberant eagerness to tangle with the bookies and contagious appetite for enjoyment will agreeably colonise the Cotswolds. That effect was more muted when economic pressures caused the selling of too many of their promising horses and they had to endure a painfully meagre diet of Cheltenham winners, sometimes one or none in a year, as was true in the late 1980s. Now they are primed for plunder but, win or lose, they will savour the craic. And joining their company will be as much of a pleasure for me as it has been in attending all but two or three Festivals over the past half-century (after the early experience of watching Arkle’s three Gold Cup triumphs, staying away was always going to be a hardship rarely, and never willingly, suffered).
Even the Mullins-Walsh partnership may not elicit the loudest roar of the week. It will probably be earned by Tony McCoy. The Ulsterman’s last appearance as a rider at the Festival is bound to evoke a demonstration of heartfelt appreciation of the miracle-man who is set to crown his valedictory season with his 20th consecutive jump jockeys’ championship in England. Having his name attached to the final race on Friday will be just part of it.
Ruby Walsh is McCoy’s closest friend in the weighing room and the warmest words I’ve ever heard about the retiring champion came from Ruby’s father, Ted. Homage from the senior Walsh means a lot. His successive careers as an outstanding amateur rider and then as a trainer delivering big-race winners from a small yard have honed a natural shrewdness about every aspect of racing that he expresses with earthy eloquence and vivid directness.
When I talked to him last week, he was as ebullient with anticipation of Cheltenham as all Irishmen have a right to be. “We had the eras of plenty created by the jumpers sent across by Vincent O’Brien and Tom Dreaper from the 1940s through to the late 1960s,” he said. “There’d be fellas who paid off their mortgages and bought farms of land from the winnings Vincent brought them. So the lean years afterwards were hard to take. But now we have the Mullins era.
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“How could you put your finger on a key talent and say it produces achievements as brilliant as Willie’s? Still, I believe his most remarkable asset is his ability to recruit raw material of tremendous quality year after year. With the bunch of major owners he has, there’s plenty of money at his disposal but other fellas with plenty of money don’t buy as cleverly as he does. He has a handle on the best animals available in France and in point-to-point racing here. And once he’s sought out the right stuff, he’s not liable to make many mistakes.”
In discussing his son’s amazing list of rides at the Festival, the main focus was on the seven-year-old bay gelding Faugheen, unbeaten in eight starts and quoted at around even-money for the Champion Hurdle. “Faugheen could be anything, perhaps another Istabraq,” he said. “But we can’t judge his worth until he’s tested against the likes of The New One, Jezki and Hurricane Fly on Tuesday. If he comes down the hill, gets a kick in the belly and leaves them in his wake, we’ll know he’s something special. Until then, it’s all speculation.”
That’s the kind of resolving of speculation I find irresistible.
No winners in spit spat
THERE may be scepticism about the claims of those Premier League players who have said they regard saliva as a worse offensive weapon than malevolently applied studs. But arch questions concerning how much spittle it would take to break a bone don’t obscure the reality that most men are liable to react with warlike disgust if somebody spits at them. Recognition of that was presumably enough to influence the Football Association panel considering the incident involving Jonny Evans of Manchester United and Papiss Cisse of Newcastle United. Once the panel decided the video evidence was conclusive, Fifa guidelines ensured stiff punishment. Where serious questions do arise is in comparison of the bans imposed (seven matches for Cisse, six for Evans) with others for violent or racist offences. Accusations of inconsistency aren’t groundless.
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Mackay had silk as well as steel
Watching Dave Mackay play football was never likely to leave fuzzy images in the memory. There was a sharpness of definition in his superb technique, and a clarity of legitimate purpose about his combative presence on the field that conveyed the sense of a man hard enough to daunt opponents without resorting to malicious tactics.
The resentment felt by Mackay, who died last week at 80, over a famous photograph reflected his dread of being unfairly characterised as a bully. That photograph (taken by the late Monte Fresco of the Daily Mirror during a Tottenham-Leeds match) shows him clenching one hand on the shirt of his fellow Scot Billy Bremner and snarlingly persuading Bremner that his reputation as a fiery competitor didn’t mean much when he was confronted by real toughness.
Mackay was plagued by the outrageous fallacy that, in his Spurs midfield partnership with Danny Blanchflower, hewas the enforcer charged with protecting the artist. In fact — as he demonstrated with Hearts, Tottenham and latterly Derby, and in his too infrequent appearances for Scotland (22) — Mackay had beautiful skills based on pure striking of the ball with either foot, which gave him a particular mastery of volleying. He was appreciated, almost revered, by teammates not only for his bravery (he twice recovered from left leg fractures) and his inspirational influence but for the overall quality of his play, epitomised by the crisp accuracy of his passing.
Needless to say, the trophy-winning that punctuated his career came with the clubs, not his country. As Scots muse wistfully on how a nation that once produced footballers of his calibre has declined to the point where it cannot boast a single truly remarkable player, we must remember that even when great individuals were emerging, our national team were never immune to embarrassment. Both Dave Mackay and Denis Law were on the park at Wembley in 1961 when England slaughtered Scotland 9-3.