DEEP DOWN, YOU get the feeling most of us reckon we should not even be over here, but racing’s version of keeping calm and carrying on is rarely but surreal.
Perhaps a couple of minutes before the off in a greyhound race at Kilkenny at 8.27am, a bookie from home stopped me on Winchcombe Street to tell me to back a tricast in said race. I asked him for the three dogs but, so lost was I in incredulity, I immediately forgot the three dogs.
He looked like a man scurrying between shops to get as much on as possible. The tricast failed.
Between Envoi Allen doing what Envoi Allen does and Champ’s outrageously unlikely win in the second, a woman told me how two sports journalists from Ireland were going home tomorrow and another was thinking of leaving Cheltenham tonight.
They had jumped about six flights in the opening race when Paul Reid, HSE CEO, tweeted that Ireland was ‘entering a new phase’ in the Coronavirus mess. “Please do as we urge and our ask will increase as we progress.”
There is something about the atmosphere that betrays unease.
Otherwise we in racing are as selfish as those swimmers who insist on tackling the water even in storms, placing the emergency services in peril.
Shortly after the RSA Chase, the Irish Times, its five most read stories all about one thing, reported that Ireland had endured its first death from the Coronavirus. Leading Flat trainer Ger Lyons to tweet that he was “amazed” Cheltenham went ahead.
Asked about the wisdom of the Festival being realised, a leading World Health Organisation official told RTÉ Radio: “We are saying to organisations ‘you do the risk assessment’.”
And they did that, it seems, and will have to stand over the decision.
Envoi Allen briefly had us forgetting the problems of the world. The same could not be said for those who somehow thought it a good idea to lay him in running at 3/1 and bigger.
Davy Russell rode racing’s answer to Leonardo DiCaprio like he was playing a game: how long can I mess around here and can I get people worried for no reason whatever?
Not much more can be said about this horse, who looks to have no flaw other than that he is as vulnerable to injury as is your average four-legged horse. Talk of a Gold Cup now seems a little improbable, though, with Gordon Elliott surprisingly admitting stamina concerns for yesterday, not to mind a Gold Cup.
“He’s a marvellous horse,” Russell reflected, “and I’m delighted to be associated with him. He’s a hard one to call as when he settles, he switches off the engines and runs in neutral for a lot of the race. You don’t know when to pick him up.”
The bookmakers needed to be picked up off the floor three races in, Barry Geraghty driving the hugely popular Champ to success in the RSA Chase and another well-backed McManus runner, Dame De Compagnie, to victory in the Coral Cup.
Geraghty, 39, is having a similar week to the one he had 17 years ago, when he hit five winners at ‘The Fez’ and helped me fall in love with racing.
“These wise old owls are good guys,” reflected the trainer of the McManus pair, and of Epatante, Nicky Henderson. “I am thrilled for him; I really am.”
Champ’s win had as much to do with Minella Indo and Allaho stopping in front than it did anything else. The gamble to run Allaho in this race backfired and Willie Mullins came out of the Coral Cup with his Cheltenham form being 4F0F24325U33FU60FP. He might have wished it never took place.
Mullins would have a finish to remember when Ferny Hollow took the Bumper. For Paul Townend, criticised by Mullins yesterday for his ride on Benie Des Dieux, this was sweet redemption.
The Champion Chase being reduced to a Defi Du Seuil walkover, with the only two horses that otherwise could win the race (Altior and Chacun Pour Soi) both scratched, turned into a total head-scratcher. The hot favourite ran a stinker, Sceau Royal could not raise a gallop and that left Politologue to scoot home, albeit in one of the most forgettable renewals ever.
Then there was Tiger Roll, whose bid to win the cross-country race again ran aground on the testing ground, JP McManus — who also won the Fred Winter with Aramax — winning again with the French import Easysland, potentially a star in this sphere.
There is something a bit hollow about it all. I am not sure we will get through the next two days, based on nothing but a hunch.
As I end this piece, a mate in Galway texts me it’s “strongly rumoured the schools here are going to be shut down”. Horse Racing Ireland CEO Brian Kavanagh says Irish racing is beholden not to him but to whatever the government decides.
But should we really be among 60,000-odd at Cheltenham watching horses run in a field?