DESPITE a pallid complexion and a shining black eye, Ruby Walsh was putting a brave face on his fitness for the biggest four days of the racing year yesterday. His first winner in nearly four months, on Mon Parrain for the champion trainer, Paul Nicholls, eased the pain, but Walsh will still be relying heavily on his instinct when he walks into the weighing room at the Cheltenham Festival on Tuesday.
Walsh is hot favourite to be leading Festival rider for the fifth time in six years and his faithful old partners, Big Buck’s, Master Minded and Kauto Star, are all lining up once more in the big championship races. But a crashing fall at Naas last week just a few days after his return from a broken leg, suffered in mid-November, interrupted a preparation already looking rushed.
“I’m grand,” said Walsh bravely in a corner of the Sandown Park weighing room. “There are different types of pain. There’s broken pain and there’s soreness pain and jockeys know which is which. This [pointing to his eye] is soreness pain.
“I always planned to be back by Cheltenham. It was early November when I broke my leg, so you can do the maths. You know you’ve got plenty of time and you know you’re not going to miss the Festival.”
But it’s been touch and go for the most successful Festival jockey of the past five years and, in the eyes of many, the supreme big-race jockey of a gifted generation. Like any jockey, Walsh thrives on confidence and on the routine of daily race riding and he has been short of both since his comeback eight days ago.
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“My fitness is not a factor,” he said. “I’ve been riding out and been in the gym. In fact, I’m glad to see the back of the gym, but it’s been a long time since I’ve ridden a winner, so this one was nice. I’m lucky, I’m going a helluva lot better than most people in Ireland.”
Walsh might lose the ride on Hurricane Fly for Willie Mullins in the Champion Hurdle, which would be a far bigger indignity than any number of stitches in his face. Paul Townend has ridden the Irish challenger in eight of his nine races and Mullins is likely to stick with the understudy.
“I’d love to be riding him because he has an outstanding chance,” said Walsh. “But it’s not my decision.”
Walsh would not be drawn on nominating the most probable winner from his host of rides but if Kauto Star came back to claim a third Gold Cup, there would be no need for any painkillers. “Kauto Star would be the fairytale,” he said. “Whatever happens won’t change my appreciation of him.”
Alarazi took the Imperial Cup, the feature race of the card yesterday, putting himself in line for a £75,000 bonus from Paddy Power if the seven-year-old wins at the Festival for trainer, Lucy Wadham, and jockey, Dominic Elsworth. It was Elsworth’s biggest winner since his return from a year away with a serious head injury. He, too, would be happy with just one winner this week at Cheltenham.