Long Run then, the RSA Chase favourite, what do you make of him? The best thing since the thing that was the best thing before sliced bread came along and ruined it for all the good things, according to the majority of people who generally know about these things; a stalactite perched precariously on the precipice, if you ask the silent minority, or those for whom alliteration is king.

Incidentally, on the whole sliced bread thing, there have been many good things since sliced bread – the internet and Sinndar in the Irish Derby to name but two, and I’m not sure that the telex didn’t come along after they managed to split the bread – and surely one of them was a better thing than Peter Lyons’s finest. I’m not even fully convinced that the sliced pan is that good a thing. Give me a batch loaf that you can get a knife at and cut as thick as you like before smothering it with a couple of lumps of butter and a spoonful of raspberry jam any day.Read the rest of this entry »

We’ll win the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle anyway, that’s for sure. Sure isn’t Dunguib the best novice to put his head through a bridle since Golden Cygnet? Don’t mind about his jumping, it’s only the English saying he can’t jump, trying to convince themselves, and he won’t have to jump over the hurdles anyway, he can kick every one of them out of the ground if he wants and Brian O’Connell will still be able to stop for a pint at the Guinness Village on the way up the home straight before standing up in his irons at the furlong pole.

(Big cheer.)

We’ll win the Arkle as well I’d say. Read the rest of this entry »

There was a time, a couple of years ago, that you couldn’t walk down any main street in Ireland on any day within four and a half weeks of the third Tuesday in March but you would happen upon a pre-Cheltenham evening.  That’s not the case any more, but nor have they gone the way of the cigarette-smoking dinosaurs.  The good ones and the good causes have survived.

They fill a need, that’s for sure.  The appetite for Cheltenham around these parts is pretty much insatiable these days, it’s a perennial thing, Cheltenham talk and Cheltenham thoughts the meat and drink, pre-Cheltenham evenings the pieces of bread that keep you going until the main course arrives.Read the rest of this entry »

There is a big difference between taking a five-year-old racing and taking a three-year-old racing, even if the three-year-old was the five-year-old two years ago, if you follow.  (Humans we’re talking about here now, little people, not horses.)  Incidentally, neither activity is in the same ballbark as taking a three-year-old and a one-year-old racing at the same time, or taking a four-year-old, a two-year-old and a zero-year-old racing, even if you do have help on hand.  You don’t want to be taking full responsibility for the three of them, that’s for sure, not if experience is any kind of a guide (one racecourse is not big enough), unless, of course, you are into penance (it is Lent after all).  Even if you are, better to wear sack-cloth and flail yourself periodically with a cat o’nine tails than to try to master the three of them and a seven-race-card all at once.Read the rest of this entry »

Kilcrea Castle, Racing Post Chase?  Big chance.  He looked like a potential Racing Post Chase horse when he finished third to The Sawyer in a two-mile-five-and-a-half-furlong handicap chase at Ascot last time.  He travelled well in that race, he jumped well and he looked a real threat to The Sawyer rounding the home turn, but lack of a recent run seemed to tell in the home straight, and he couldn’t sustain his effort, surrendering second place to Miss Mitch on the run-in.

Dig a little deeper.  Read the rest of this entry »

I have long since given up trying to figure out the pecking order of the Willie Mullins bumper horses in the lead up to Cheltenham. I remember standing in the stands (always a good thing to be doing in the stands) and watching Joe Cullen win the Champion Bumper in 2000, with Be My Royal finishing third and Tuesday (Ruby) fourth, and thinking, well if someone as astute as Willie Mullins isn’t sure, and if the bookmakers and the punters between them can’t figure it out (so much for the wisdom of crowds), what chance have I?

Now, a similar affliction is creeping into the novice hurdlers.Read the rest of this entry »

Five myths about Saturday’s Totesport Trophy:

Myth 1: A two-mile handicap hurdle, with about 127 runners and 26lb between top and bottom weight, sponsored by a bookmaker, which was won in 2007 by a 50/1 shot, it is a bookmakers’ benefit gig.

Perhaps surprisingly, it isn’t really. True, Heathcote’s win three years ago was a bit of a thunder cloud in the Sahara, but excepting that one, the race is generally won by a fairly well-fancied runner. Four of the last eight winners were priced at 15/2 or shorter and, excepting Heathcote, you have to go back to Within The Law in 1979 to find the last winner who was sent off at greater than 16/1. It is actually a punters’ race.Read the rest of this entry »

Punting Low 1: Zaarito. Again. I think I have now backed Zaarito more often than he has run. It was all going swimmingly, he settled well, he jumped really well, he moved through his field well, he moved easily up just behind long-time leader Citizen Vic going to the last, looking by far the most likely winner, hold your breath. (We know how this one ends, it is a Punting Low after all.) Down. Of course, when a horse falls it is easy to look back at the tape and point out something that the jockey might have done differently. Davy Condon allowed him go in and pop, obviously happy that all he had to do was land on the far side of the fence upright, he didn’t have to make ground at the obstacle, the rider went for the safe option, but he just got in a little tight. If Davy had asked him for a long one, he might have made it, who knows? I got a text from a friend after the race: What price did he trade in-running?Read the rest of this entry »

So Twist Magic is up to his old tricks again, polarising opinion. There was the Twist Magic who was travelling like a dream in the Arkle when he and Don’t Push It got a perfect 6.0 from all the judges for synchronised falling at the second last, after which there was an enquiry into the second last, whether or not it should be the second last at all, or whether it should be razed to the ground and a picture of Edward Gillespie put there in its place.

It was the same Twist Magic who won the Maghull Chase at Aintree on his next start, the same one who won a graduation chase at Kempton on his debut the following season and who beat Voy Por Ustedes and Monet’s Garden in the Tingle Creek Chase at Sandown that December, usurping the former at the head of the ante post market for the Champion Chase.Read the rest of this entry »

There was as much turf racing in Manhattan last week as there was in Ireland, sofrom a racing point of view, it made as much sense to be there as to be here, kids and all, just to see what all the hullabaloo was about, if the Empire State Building really was bigger than Liberty Hall, and here’s the thing – it is. (More expensive to get in as well, but whatya gonna do?).

The trip was planned. It did help that part of the extended family live in New York, and that rent payable amounted to six loaves of Brennan’s bread, 480 Barry’s tea bags and a ticket to a Knicks game, but even so, it wasn’t as if we all woke up on Monday morning and said, look, yesterday’s Sussex National at Plumpton will probably be the last steeplechase run until the Normans Grove Chase at Fairyhouse, let’s head to New York tomorrow, let’s see how much flights are with 24 hours’ notice and how much discount you get for the small ones, under six but over the all-important age of two (when they start to cost you). And don’t think that you will get away with saying they are under two if they are two years and two weeks on the day that you fly. You may get out ofDublin, but you will almost certainly incur the wrath of the mean lady on the check-in desk on the way home. Honestly.Read the rest of this entry »