WHILE the flat season rolls on from classics and the range of big meetings through April to November, the jumps season has really five pivotal points across five months.
Everything else is an aside, one or two famous races apart, and it’s the Grade 1s on the big days in front of the crowds that all jumps’ owners seek to win.
Leopardstown at Christmas, the Dublin Racing Festival (DRF), Cheltenham and Aintree and then Punchestown. Those are the days.
The revived Mullins versus Elliott trainers’ battle has become a major talking point this season, after recent years where it looked a one-horse race with Elliott a respectable second.
At Leopardstown’s four-day Christmas meeting, Gordon Elliott trained 13 winners to Willie Mullins’ four, it was just one a day for the champion trainer.
At last year’s DRF, Elliott was basically absent from the big races, no winners, while Willie won six Grade 1s and the Grade 2 bumper.
Cheltenham Festival was similar, 10 Mullins winners and Elliott just getting a much-needed one over the line in the very last race on day four. Now we have battle joined again over these two DRF days. But what a difference a year makes. It’s a changed playing field. Elliott has seven runners over the two opening novice races to five for Mullins, the then number one Elliot novice chaser against probably a number two Mullins novice in the Arkle. Four Elliott runners in the Grade 2 bumper - one with Mr P.W. Mullins on board - tells the story of the week. The Champion Hurdle is a tactical Mullins’ four v Elliott’s two battle.
Highlight
The Paddy Power Gold Cup is the highlight race, a proper contest - and eight in the Mullins squad. It will determine where they are deployed at Cheltenham, especially Gaelic Warrior, Fact To File and Spindleberry. With no Haiti Couleurs, it’s just the best of Irish and it would raise the roof - this meeting is pretty good for that - if Galopin Des Champs could make it number four.
Conditions should be fine for him, and maybe less so for Gaelic Warrior and Fact To File. Can we have faith that Inothewayurthinkin is likely to be close to the “Cheltenham version of himself”? Was Affordale Fury’s Christmas win just taking advantage of others not being primed for the day?
Jack Kennedy is an interesting addition to I Am Maximus, who may well have been hiding his light under a handicap bushel for some time. He might be the big danger again to Galopin.
The two novice chases look favourite-bound, if you can ever be 100% confident in a novice chase.
The Ladbroke Chase depends on whether Marine Nationale runs. Solness can’t keep winning here, Majborough can’t keep making mistakes? Could Energumene take advantage on this going? If you are a Majborough fan, what’s another race? One day, he’ll put it all together and you will kick yourself if you left him!
The big question for the Champion Hurdle is how conditions might play into this mares’ duel. Both have won over further so stamina should not be a question, a fitter Lossiemouth having a length advantage at Christmas. How Anzadam and El Fabiolo are ridden could play a significant part. It might be the day to stick with Brighterdaysahead, in name and on track.
WITH prize money always the top of any ‘what do we need to improve’ conversations in Irish racing, the HRI statistics for 2025 this week revealed that commercial sponsorship for 2025 came in at €7m which, compared with the 2024 figure of €6.8m, was an increase of 2.9%.
In Britain this week, the Jockey Club also announced a rise in prize money to a total of £61.47 million across 2026, their figure in 2025 was £58.1 million.
These figures can be somewhat skewed in terms of the overall figures, with so many summer festivals and regional tracks so well supported by local business advertising support.
It’s always a tricky debate in the mainstream media, claiming that prize money is so vital, when so many of the winners are owned by wealthy people. But it always ignores that it’s the same as any business, wages and employment are provided, all the way down the line, in what remains a very hands-on workplace, in all areas of such a valuable industry on the worldwide stage.
In that bigger picture, the news that the Coral Cup, one of the most notable handicaps of the year in terms of interest, and as part of the main meeting of the jumps season on the Cheltenham Festival card, and also sponsored by Coral since its inception in 1993, will no longer have the Coral sponsorship is a shade depressing. And it must be concerning for the whole racing bookmaker sponsorship arena.
The reason given that, in Britain, “imminent increases to remote gaming duty, which is levied on online casino-style games, and remote betting duty on sports, excluding British racing” have made the company reassess its marketing spend.
It’s the whole ‘when Britian sneezes, Ireland catches a cold’ scenario that may well be coming down the line.
Paddy Power and Ladbrokes are, of course, headline sponsors this weekend at Leopardstown.
SHURE ‘twas grand, nothing happened. Jockeys and trainers were all happy to proceed with racing at Cheltenham last Saturday, despite a deep hole being found in the middle of the racetrack up the home straight, which was bypassed.
The decision taken to race contrasted with the views of some observers who were concerned if officials could be sure beforehand that nothing bad would happen, and what the consequences might be if there was another hole, or weakened ground and something happened to a horse on the big Saturday meeting.
I felt that all the ‘hindsight’ comments - that it was proven to be safe - a bit like justifying going through a red light. “I knew it was safe, I made it.” But there was still a big risk taken and it’s not something to be done regularly.