As a young lad, I had the great good fortune to meet Arkle. He was in retirement in County Kildare and a cousin of mine – my family hails from a long line of blacksmiths – was involved with his welfare.

I have a picture to mark the occasion: Arkle with one of my sisters plus our cousin. It must have been the early seventies given her bright, floral dress and Dame Edna glasses. She has a smile in the picture as wide as the winning distance of Arkle’s third Gold Cup. And why not? She had just met, stroked, fed and patted one of racing’s greatest legends, had got a hair from his tail and even a lick of her autograph book from him. We still have the hair and the book and, of course, the memories.

Things that you remember about Arkle are his confidence, gentleness and presence. Ok, I was a small being at the time, but I still felt that I was in the company of something special. He gently walked over when he saw us and took great interest, in a gentle way, of all that was going on. There was no nastiness or intrusion to him and he held his head high and inquisitively in a manner that suggested a confidence and love of life.

My father, who once worked for Arkle’s trainer Tom Dreaper, had backed Arkle for the 1963 Hennessy Gold Cup at Newbury. You see, he had met up with Mr Dreaper at Newbury and, in his masterfully understated way, had told dad that it was quite possible that Arkle was a bit better than Prince Regent. Yes, that’s the Prince Regent who, in 1946, won the Champion Chase and Gold Cup at Cheltenham – and that was when his career was in decline, the Second World War having denied him the chance to be tested in his prime.

You can understand, then, why dad backed Arkle. However, Arkle got beaten in the Hennessy, an uncharacteristic mistake early in the home straight putting paid to his chances on a foggy day in Berkshire. The race was won by Mill House, the rising star of English chasing that had landed the 1963 Cheltenham Gold Cup as a mere six-year-old. He was a huge talent.

Undeterred – for Tom Dreaper’s greatness was heavily backed up by astuteness – dad headed for Cheltenham and the 1964 Gold Cup. He cut a fairly lonely figure in the ‘Arkle queue’ as the gang who had derided him for backing Arkle at Newbury, looked to play up their Mill House winnings. Well, the rest, as they say is history. Arkle galloped up the Cheltenham hill to inflict a defeat on Fulke Walwyn’s hugely-talented gelding from which, some said, he never recovered.

His brilliance established, Arkle went on to confirm his greatness by winning the Gold Cup again in 1965 and 1966 and he remains the benchmark by which chasers are measured.

In total, he ran 35 times, winning on 27 occasions, and he never fell. Over fences, he ran 26 times, winning on 22 occasions and finishing second twice and third twice. He was ridden throughout his career by legendary horseman Pat Taaffe.

In addition to his three Cheltenham Gold Cups, he won the King George VI Chase (1965), the Irish Grand National (1964), the Hennessy Gold Cup (1964 and 1965), the Whitbread Gold Cup (1965), the Leopardstown Chase (1964, 65, 66), the Thyestes Chase (1964) and the Broadway Chase (now the RSA Chase, 1963). When he was entered for handicaps, the grader had to frame two separate lists of weights, one with him in the race, and one if he didn’t run. In the 1965 Whitbread, he conceded 35lbs to the entire field and made most of the running to score.

His career ended all-too-early when a pedal bone injury was sustained in the 1966 King George VI Chase, and even then he managed to finish second. You see, he also had courage.

His name is commemorated at Cheltenham with the Arkle Challenge Trophy bearing his name. There is also a statue to his memory at the track and, I guess I should add, a bar named after him too.

In his fine book ‘The Great Racehorses’, Julian Wilson writes: “No one who ever saw what he achieved – and how he achieved it – could ever expect to see his like again”, while Timeform, in 1966, wrote that he ‘has proved himself the greatest chaser ever’. He remains one of racing’s greatest legends. The Arkle Challenge Trophy Chase, sponsored by the Irish Independent, will be run this year at 2:05pm on Tuesday 15 March, the opening day of the festival.

I’m not sure what it is about the Hennessy Gold Cup but, as the USAns would say, we suck at it.
 
Have a look at the Hennessy roll of honour, and count the Irish-trained winners.  Our six-year-old uses her fingers to add and to count, so it might be an idea to do that as you come across each one.  She asked a pertinent question the other day (they get cleverer, you know, which isn’t ideal when your whole dictatorship regime inside the front door, who gets the remote control, what we have for dinner, what the bedtime story is, who gets the Brunch and who gets the Wibbly Wobbly Wonder, that kind of thing, is knowledge-based, as in the grown-up knows best): What happens if the sum adds up to something that is more than 10?
 
You won’t have a problem with that one when you go counting Irish-trained winners in the Hennessy, that’s for sure.  The last decade: None.  Previous decade: None. Previous (x2) decade: Eh, none.  Hold on.  One.  Bright Highway, 1980, Michael O’Brien.  I thought that Bright Highway was the Mackeson, the last Mackeson winner until Tranquil Sea came along and brought the trophy back across the Irish one last year?  He was, but he was the last Hennessy winner as well.
 
Before Bright Highway?  Arkle.  No kiddin.  Arkle is so long ago that he has legendary only status with me, in that he was before my lifetime.  So far before my lifetime started, in fact, that I have only ever read and heard about him.  I never actually experienced him.   He’s a lot like The Beatles in that way.
 
It’s not as if we haven’t had good horses in the interim, good staying chasers.  We have won two Gold Cups in the last six years, six Grand Nationals in the last 11.  It’s just that Hennessy that we can’t seem to be able to get right.
 
Actually, the roll of honour doesn’t tell the full story, actually.  It does us a disservice.  Unless, that is, you notice the little star beside Gingembre (2002) and read the small print.  Something about the Willie Mullins-trained Be My Royal being first past the post but being subsequently disqualified because traces of a banned substance were found in his sample thereafter.  It’s the same little star as the one that sits beside Master Smudge in the Gold Cup roll of honour (ref Tied Cottage).  Minute traces, actually, which was a real shame.  If there had been more room beside the little star, they could have added that Noel Meade’s horse, Harbour Pilot, struck the front on the run to the last that day, looked the most likely winner by some way, but then tried to take the last fence home with him as a souvenir without realising that they weren’t portable fences, not in those days, and that he did well to stand up, not to mind staying on to pass the post in third place, promoted to second subsequently.
 
It is a Noel Meade horse who leads the Irish charge again this year.  Pandorama, he of the bloody nose at Down Royal a couple of weeks ago.  Thankfully, it was a bloody nose sustained by banging his head off something, not by a burst blood vessel.  He has never burst.  Actually, he is consistency equinified, winner of eight of his nine races to date, beaten only by Mikael D’Haguenet.  He is the perfect Hennessy horse, a second-season chaser, progressive, could be anything, could be Gold Cup class, a real stayer who handles soft ground and a galloping track.  He will be 8lb out of the handicap if Denman runs, which is the plan, but I wouldn’t worry too much about that.  There will be lots of horses out of the handicap, and he should have at least 8lb in hand of the handicapper.  We also have the Mouse Morris-trained China Rock going in to bat for Ireland, another highly progressive second-season chaser.  The only trouble is, there are lots of other similarly progressive second-season chasers in there, Weird Al, Burton Port, Diamond Harry, Hey Big Spender, and you could nearly lump Big Fella Thanks in there as well, even though he is a third-season chaser.
 
It’s a race that’s going to rock, as the USAns might say.
  
* For more of Donn’s thoughts, visit www.donnmcclean.com.

Captain Cee Bee makes his eagerly anticipated seasonal bow in the Poplar Square Chase on what is without question the best card of the new jumps season so far at Naas on Saturday, where ground conditions are described as soft following 17mm of rain since declaration time.

Eddie Harty’s stable star faces just three rivals in the Grade 3 event at 2.35, all of whom are classy sorts in their own right, with Catch Me perhaps the most interesting of them on his first start since last year’s Christmas Festival at Leopardstown. However it will be disappointing if the former Cheltenham Festival winner, who put a disappointing show in the Arkle behind him when landing a Grade 1 at Punchestown in April and is unbeaten in two outings at today’s venue, cannot successfully concede weight all round.

Proceedings get under way with an intriguing renewal of the 2m4f Tipper Road Hurdle, which features some of last season’s most promising novice hurdlers. Top-weight Shinrock Paddy probably has the most to prove after disappointing in the Albert Bartlett Novice Hurdle when last seen, and it would be no surprise to see the four year-olds Carlito Brigante and Son Amix dominate. The latter’s trainer Tom Cooper has his horses in good form, and in receipt of all the allowances his representative may just have the edge.

Cooper’s Lucky William looked set to make a winning bow over fences when unfortunately capsizing two out at Tipperary earlier this month and gets the chance to make amends in the 2m beginners event at 3.35. A useful hurdler last season, he faces stiff opposition from the likes of Sweeps Hill, whose yard is also going very well at present, and the experienced Sorceror but is nevertheless fancied to prove up to the task.

Irish National heroine Bluesea Cracker returns to action in the valuable Brown Lad Handicap Hurdle at 4.05, and from a 21lb lower mark in this discipline than the one she defied at Fairyhouse on Easter Monday is likely to be a big player if fit enough to do herself justice. Kerry National runner-up Dancing Tornado, again let down by his jumping in the Munster National last time, and midweek Punchestown winner Sweet Shock (who captured the bumper at this fixture twelve months ago) are other interesting contenders in the 2m4f event.

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. (more…)

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