JOHN KIELY IS 85.
And Gordon Elliott was right when he said that anyone who says Cheltenham is not everything is, well, wrong.
John McConnell took it to another level yesterday. I asked him about Mahler Mission, a faller when leading two out in Tuesday’s novice race for amateurs: would that race have meant more to him than an Irish National, in which the classy horse is entered?
He simply replied that it did. The Irish National is our biggest handicap, one of the oldest races we have, worth half a million euros, no less. The race Mahler Mission fell in was well down the Cheltenham pecking order.
Cheltenham genuinely is everything. Racing TV did an interview today after Delta Work edged Galvin in a superb renewal of what should be the Festival’s least relevant race – the cross-country – and Michael O’Leary was Michael O’Leary but Jack Kennedy, dealing with a fifth leg break at the age of 23, could only grimace to laud winning connections on a horse he should have ridden.
John Kiely is 85.
Jack, as ever, was perfectly polite. But the pain he was feeling wasn’t in the fifth broken leg.
Today was all about Irishmen. Willie Mullins won two of the big races and Patrick Neville won another, a native of County Limerick who decided that he needed to get out of the country to make his love a business in England – and there was something of an irony in that he denied the Gordon Elliott-trained hotpot Gerri Colombe with The Real Whacker in the Brown Advisory Novices Chase.
Responding to why he opted to move to England, he responded: “I couldn’t get owners in Ireland. It was either give up or stay going.”
When Maskasa landed the race named after the father of trainer Nicky Henderson, trainer of Constitution Hill, there was a beautiful moment. Nicky, high on training possibly the greatest ever, hugged de Bromhead, thinking of yesterday.
Energumene was electric in the feature. Paul Townend came into this extravaganza under pressure but he was on by far the best horse here. He rode accordingly.
“That was easy, to be honest,” admitted Townend. “I got in a lovely rhythm on him. After the first two fences he was taking them on, he was quick at them, and it was simple. It was just a matter of keeping him in a rhythm after that.
“Looser ground probably helped as well and played a factor in it, but he was just more forward. He felt a different horse today. It was a dream ride and I was able to take it all in coming up the straight, which doesn’t usually happen in those championship races.”
Lately I talked to John Kiely at Fairyhouse and asked him if he were still riding out. He was looking forward to A Dream To Share running at Leopardstown. He won that. Then JP McManus bought him. The ground went against him today. And you wonder what RTE’s Brian Gleeson thought of it all: he sold the horse to McManus but only on the basis his son, John, would ride today.
I eventually got through to John several hours after the race.
“I only stopped riding out a couple of years ago. But I’d no hesitation recommending this to JP.
“I’ve had very good horses down the years. You have to appreciate it when it happens. I’m not one for the limelight.
“Will you call me in a few weeks?”
It seemed years since Impaire Et Passe won the first, defying one of the stranger market drifts we have seen this year.
The worry here was that all the money came for Hermes Allen, trained by Paul Nicholls – once the king of this festival, now an irrelevance.
Right now, Ireland has ten winners, the hosts – Limerick man Patrick Neville included – four. Tony Bloom owns Energumine, and there is a story. Why are his horses in Ireland?
The owner of Brighton and Hove Albion said after lumping on the favourite: “We were very confident going in.
“I had a few quid on. The rain helps. We were reasonably confident anyway.”
He has a long way to go to be John Kiely.