Strange to be researching a Cheltenham feature in the middle of the summer, when the ground in your back garden (unwatered) is firm to hard, the temperature is scraping 22 degrees, maybe 23, rain is so scarce that you have to water your new Mimosa tree every second evening, and your main racing thoughts are of the Eclipse and the King George (a mile and a half flat race at Ascot, not a three-mile chase at Kempton), but it still takes months rather than days to turn a television programme around apparently, so needs must.

Favourite Cheltenham moment? It’s a four-way photo between Dawn Run and Moscow Flyer and Kicking King and War Of Attrition, but the mare just gets up. So where were you when Peter O’Sullevan uttered those words? Where were you when the mare began to get up, and wrested the Gold Cup back from Wayward Lad, who would have traded at 1.02 had Betfair been more than an embryo in Andrew Black’s head at the time? At the top of the uncovered stands, binoculars long-since abandoned, not because the left lens wouldn’t focus properly, but because you couldn’t hold them steady for all that your heart was pounding and your hands were shaking? Or standing on the lawn, trying to see through the higher heads in front of you, straining your ears to listen to the commentary, ecstatic as you saw Jonjo’s red body flash past behind the sea of hats, and knowing that there was a chance? Nope. Down the back of the chemistry lab, actually, with a yellow transistor radio pressed to your ear, confident that the whole distillation of water experiment would hold Mr Kelly’s attention for at least seven minutes.

“What’s going on over there?”

“Dawn Run just won the Gold Cup sir.”

Detention at least, maybe a note home to your parents. Still, it would be worth it, the mare had won the Gold Cup, and that wasn’t going to change.

“Oh good. What price was she?”

We are used to nine and 10 Irish winners at Cheltenham these days. We had five in 2007, and we were disappointed. Seven this year was all right, we’ll take it, but only just. No Gold Cup winner, no Champion Hurdle winner, and if one of the seven hadn’t been Big Zeb’s win in the Champion Chase, we probably would have been disgusted.

How quickly we forget the dark days, not that long ago even now. Galmoy flew the Irish flag on his own in 1987 and 1988, and in 1989, when John Mulhern’s gelding just couldn’t get his 10-year-old body past Rustle in his gallant attempt to land the hat-trick in the Stayers’ Hurdle, there were no Irish-trained winners at Cheltenham. Not one. Zip.

When we think of the Champion Hurdle, we think that it is ours to win. Seven wins in nine renewals will do that to you, and the fact that we haven’t won any of the last three doesn’t rest easy. We’re overdue. Again, forgetting the dark days. We didn’t win the Champion Hurdle at all between Dawn Run in 1984 and Istabraq in 1998. That’s 14 years. We didn’t win the Gold Cup between Dawn Run in 1986 and Imperial Call in 1996, and we didn’t win it again until Kicking King came along in 2005. Nor did we win the Champion Chase between Buck House in 1986 and Klairon Davis in 1996, nor the Sun Alliance Chase between Antarctic Bay in 1985 and Florida Pearl in 1998.

These are good days. Hopefully the bad days will get more remote as time moves on.

* For more of Donn’s thoughts, visit www.donnmcclean.com.

Betdiary indeed. Here’s mine. Backed Captain Cee Bee for the Arkle at 20/1 after he beat Zaarito and An Cathaoir Mor in his beginners’ chase at Naas in December. Check. Backed him again the following day when Ladbrokes went 25/1. Check. Whiled away the rest of the winter on www.ferrari.com, putting together my ideal spec (the leopard skin seats looked good) as my palms got progressively sweatier clutching the ante post docket. Check. Didn’t lay off any of it, even when he was backed down to 5/2 favourite. No cheque.

It must have been a killer for trainer Eddie Harty that The Captain performed so indifferently at Cheltenham, but we know now that it wasn’t the horse’s fault.  (more…)

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…)