IN many ways, last week was the ideal Punchestown Festival. Willie Mullins won (but not everything), British horses travelled and had success while the meeting was bathed in sunshine which brought record numbers through the gates.
Unfortunately, I didn’t make it along, but the cameras captured the five days beautifully, bringing the scope of the event to the stay-at-home viewer.
An array of angles took in the contours of the track along with the vast crowds in attendance and one got a deep sense of what was going on in every race, something that often isn’t the case in mid-winter when too many of the shots concentrate on the backs of horses and riders.
Anyway, enough romance, back to reality. The biggest challenge with assessing Punchestown form is differentiating what is real from what is fake; these races come at the end of a long season for many horses, run on ground often different to their previous races, and what happens doesn’t always carry forward.
Nothing was more real than Galopin Des Champs winning the Punchestown Gold Cup. He is a horse so talented that his off days involve going close in competitive Grade 1s, but he is unbeatable in a setup such as this when allowed to dictate and nothing could get within 22 lengths of him.
Best again and again
Since moving out of novice chases, his seasons have comprised at least four runs, all at Grade 1 level, and he has turned up at or near his best again and again.
Inothewayurthinkin may have caught him out at Cheltenham, and that is the race that matters most, but for overall body of work in recent seasons nothing comes close to Galopin Des Champs.
Cheltenham had raised a few questions about Final Demand, but a 16-length win in the Alanna Homes Champion Novice Hurdle reasserted his position at, or near, the top of this season’s novice hurdlers.
Tactics were changed as he made the running for the first time in four starts, settling well and his hurdling good after an awkward jump at the second.
The race produced an excellent time and while The Yellow Clay underperformed, Final Demand still beat a good prospect in Lovely Hurling and should continue to be hard to beat in Ireland.
The track at Cheltenham remains an unknown; he did get beaten there, albeit against the best opposition he has faced and ridden to take a lead, but his three wins on very different Irish tracks have all been by wide margins.
Bambino best
In the bumper division, Bambino Fever confirmed herself the best around and it doesn’t seem to matter what ground or pace she faces; having won a pair of well-run races on slow ground on her first two starts, she looked even better winning steadily-run contests on better ground in the two Champion Bumpers.
Her form stacks up too with the likes of Switch From Diesel and Carrigmoornaspruce, both well behind her at the DRF, running well at Punchestown too.
The Triumph Hurdle had thrown up a surprise winner in Poniros, with many believing the best horse finished second, Lulamba paying for getting into a race too soon with East India Dock and others.
That theory proved correct in the Ballymore Champion Four-Year-Old Hurdle where the Henderson runner reversed form to the tune of four lengths.
Perhaps the decision to ride Poniros more forward worked against the Mullins runner as he raced more keenly than in the Triumph, but Lulamba – who had been declared over two-and-a-half miles at Aintree – would hardly have been suited by a sharp two miles at Punchestown, and was given the ride of a stayer here, pressing on after halfway and keeping on well late. A scopey sort, chasing should suit him well.
Outside bias
A set of results that felt less real came in the chase races on the Friday and Saturday cards. Punchestown watered extensively before and during the meeting and were roundly praised for doing so, but it did create a bias towards the outside on the last two days, something that most of the Mullins family (Emmet, Danny and Willie) along with Mark Walsh commented on.
Winners like Sea Music, Bill Baxter and Shanbally Kid all got into the right part of the track from early in their respective races and likely looked better than they are, while those that raced around the inside are hardly as bad as they appeared.
A final aspect of Punchestown that felt bogus was the performance of the Henry de Bromhead and Gavin Cromwell runners.
Both trainers enjoyed championship race success at Cheltenham, but their horses seemed over-the-top by this stage of the season, de Bromhead 0/30 with two places, Cromwell 1/31 with seven places, and it might be worth forgiving their runs when they return from a break.
FOR a rider of his profile, Paul Townend does little with the media, seemingly preferring to concentrate on his main job, so it was interesting to see RTÉ Racing travel along with him last Wednesday for a ‘day in the life’ feature.
Townend came across as both relaxed and well-prepared, speaking about how he intended to ‘do the paper [and] the last few bits of form’ after walking the track, while also working with the physio to loosen out tightness in his back before racing.
He seemed to have an interest in minding his body, preventing injury before it happens, something that is also seen in the way he can take periods off from riding.
We see players in other sports trying to draw out their longevity but there doesn’t seem to be much culture of self-preservation in National Hunt racing.
This year, 2024/’25, was Townend’s seventh jockeys’ championship in Ireland, the first coming in 2010/’11 when Ruby Walsh was injured, the next in 2018/’19 which was the start of five in a row.
Limited rides
In that 2018/’19 season, he rode 109 winners from 476 rides but this past season it was 108 winners from 292 rides. In his last four championship wins, he has never taken more than 293 rides in a season.
Certainly, his championship numbers this season look vastly different to those of Jack Kennedy in 2023/’24 (123 winners from 563 rides) or Davy Russell in 2017/’18 (119 winners from 476 rides) with Ruby’s Walsh’s last win in 2016/’17 (131 winners from 371 rides) perhaps the best comparison other than himself.
This past season, he has ridden sparingly in handicaps (just 42 mounts) and taken basically no outside rides, just two away from Willie Mullins all season, both for Joseph O’Brien. All of this serves to decrease his risk of injury but there is likely a reduced mental load too.
If he is going through all the form for races where he takes a ride, and his knowledge of tactics and various track biases suggests as much, then doing it repeatedly comes at a cost and remaining fresh for the best rides is the approach he is taking.
All of this is possible because he has the luxury of the Closutton job, and how much of this approach is Willie Mullins and how much is Paul Townend is unclear, but there can be little doubt that they are bring out the best in each other.