Tuesday

WHAT a difference a year makes. 12 months ago, my only Cheltenham experience was to listen on the racecourse app to one of the most dramatic Champion Hurdles ever run, so it was an unalloyed delight to rock up to Prestbury Park on Tuesday morning to experience the thrills and spills first hand again after a two-year hiatus.

I’ve been a little unimpressed by the famous Cheltenham roar in the past, but absence does make the heart grow fonder, they say, and the sound that greeted the start of the Supreme did - I must admit - give me a little tingle. Tuesday was a big day for J.P. McManus - his 75th birthday to be precise - and those particular wise guys who turn to the birthdays page of the Racing Post before looking at the racecards were all purring about the chances of The New Lion.

“Sure, they always want a winner on their birthday,” they say with a wink while I, a serious form student and non-believer in facile systems, scoff at the notion that the great man’s horses would do better today than they would on Thursday or Friday.

The New Lion can only finish third, but the winkers have already had it right off as Saratoga (“didn’t the brother win this race too?”) and Johnnywho land a double on the card in the green and gold livery, while my own bets trail behind. I start looking at Wednesday’s birthdays.

A lot of shrewd judges are on Sober Glory in the opener, mostly having taken 40/1 and 33/1 after his win at Warwick last month. Plenty join in the plunge on the day and I have to say I was stunned to see his SP of 9/2 given his price the evening before.

Those who backed him can consider themselves rather unlucky, as he still held a lead when ploughing through the last before rallying for second behind Old Park Star.

Fingers singed, but the place money is some consolation. It’s the worst start for bookmakers with winner and second particularly well backed on the day, but they have 27 races to get it back and I reckon they’ll be all right.

On the other hand, what a start for the British Prestbury Cup push, as the first four home are all trained in England, while the much-vaunted pair El Cairos and Mighty Park fail to meet expectations for Gordon Elliott and Willie Mullins, respectively.

Willie would recover quickly, but for the second year running, the Cullentra horses struggled on the whole, which was bad news for me, but worse for Gordon.

In defence of the mares’ programme...

IT was nice to see Brighterdaysahead run close to form despite those woes, but unlike at Leopardstown last month, she could never get Lossiemouth out of her comfort zone in the Champion Hurdle and trailed her old rival by six and a half lengths at the line.

The winner is a superstar and a deserving winner of the Champion Hurdle, but her win again brought up discussion of the worth of the Mares’ Hurdle.

In my youth, it was rare to see more than one mare in the Champion Hurdle and, for 75 years from the start of WWII, it was exceptionally rare to see a winner, with Dawn Run the first in 45 years to do so before Flakey Dove added to that tally a decade later to make it three wins for mares in the first 85 runnings up to 2015, the year the Mares’ Hurdle was given Grade 1 status.

Since 2016, the Mares’ Hurdle has been a genuine alternative to the Champion for mares of Grade 1 class, but despite fears that it would detract from their chances of winning the big one, the success of mares in the Champion has been remarkable, with Lossiemouth joining Annie Power, Epatante, Honeysuckle (twice) and Golden Ace in winning the day one feature.

It’s true that we sometimes see mares keeping to the easier target, but it’s hard to argue that the addition of the Dawn Run and the David Nicholson Mares’ races at Cheltenham hasn’t been a huge positive in terms of career development for top-class racemares, and the evidence of that is in the results of the big races.

It will clearly be harder to do the same for chase-orientated mares and the gap in quality between the Mares’ Chase and the Champion Chase/Gold Cup is significant, but the concept clearly works and much of the sniping has been wide of the mark.

Danny shows ‘em

ANOTHER mare who has come through the ranks to prove herself a superstar is Kargese, whose early career in France came in fillies-only races, but who has been taking on the geldings for most of her time at Closutton.

The Triumph Hurdle runner-up has taken better to Cheltenham’s fences than her conqueror that day (more of him later) and she was foot-perfect in beating the supposed big guns in a thrilling Arkle, helped by a sublime piece of race-riding from Danny Mullins.

Danny must have felt he was cursed to never ride a winner at this meeting, but the floodgates have opened since he came in for a chance ride on Flooring Porter in the 2021 Stayers’ Hurdle, and the way he ensured she met the second last on a perfect stride bears watching again.

The final turn on the old course at Cheltenham remains too tight in my view, but Danny deftly steered Kargese off the rail before bearing left into the penultimate fence, which ensured she was perfectly balanced, unlike Lulamba who met the fence wrong and lost any chance of winning as a result.

To demonstrate why that fence is so tricky, I’d recommend watching a replay of the Plate later the same day, where the first two home nipped nimbly round the inner to dominate the finish but the majority of the chasing pack were thrown wide off the sharp bend, which made already difficult tasks almost impossible.

The irony of the current set-up is that the penultimate fence used to come before the home turn, but was re-sited to cut down on the number of fallers.

It now compromises more horses than it did before and would be better back in its old position or somewhere else altogether with just one fence in the home straight.

Wednesday

WITH Kargese, Lossiemouth and Holloway Queen all winning on the opening day, it could be argued that Ladies Day came a day early but one lady who was celebrating was Venetia Williams, who hasn’t had the best of seasons by any means.

With just 14 winners for the campaign running into this week, she has a habit of popping up in handicaps at this meeting.

Martator’s 66/1 victory in the Grand Annual can be filed with those of Carrickboy (50/1) in the 2004 Festival Plate (then the Mildmay of Flete), Something Wells (33/1) in that race in 2009, when she also saddled runner-up Ping Pong Sivola, and Idole First (33/1) in the Coral Cup (and also the Plate when a positively miserly 12/1).

There have been shorter-priced winners, too, but Venetia’s Cheltenham speciality is undoubtedly the winners from left field.

In a season where the pickings have been slim, this one feels all the sweeter, even if it typically eluded me.

Other results on the day are easier to comprehend, although wins for Willie Mullins in the Turners and Brown Advisory end up suiting the bookmakers better than the punters as a rule, while all the gossip on track surrounds what may or may not have been said between Nico de Boinville and Declan Queally before the start of the opener.

Still, it’s nothing that a pint and a chat with Davy Russell can’t fix. Get the man a job with the United Nations.

Punting Nadir is social high

THERE have been a few highs on the punting front this week, but things haven’t worked out as well as expected after Old Park Star and Kargese made it two from two on Tuesday. Some of the failures since have been more painful than others, but I take a smidgeon of pride that my least successful betting venture of the week wasn’t even my fault.

I ran into old pal Bryan Gault (he of Gaultstats fame for those who know) on Tuesday and he was with a bunch of lads whose company I’d greatly enjoyed on a previous occasion we’d met at the races. We had a great chat reminiscing about past Festivals and bets won and lost, when one of them said it was a shame I’d not turned up 10 minutes earlier as I could have been in their placepot syndicate (a winner, naturally).

“We’ll put you in tomorrow” says he, and on Wednesday at noon I get a text telling me I’m in the syndicate for 20 quid. I joined the lads again to watch the first race and am given a betting slip with the details of the perm. Now I love a placepot but tend to opt for one or two selections in the Grade 1 races with a view to finding a boilover in one of the handicaps, so I’m stunned when I see that the lads have selected eight horses in the Turners and six in the Brown Advisory.

I don’t check the numbers on the slip, but it’s safe to say I’m not cheering the favourites. Sure enough, the market leaders fail to make the frame in either race, so I turn to the syndicate leader to ask what the state of play is. “They say there’s nothing worse than getting five out of six in the placepot,” he says, “and the good news is that’s not happening.”

A look at the slip confirms that of the 14 horses we have shortlisted in a pair of Grade 1 races, not a single one managed to sneak into the frame. There really should be a prize for that, but the craic was well worth the outlay, and an hour or so in the company of friends who love horseracing is both time and money well spent.

Thursday

IF there was a lesson to come out of Thursday’s racing it was the value of perseverance, with the story of the day being the victory of 33/1 chance Home By The Lee in the Stayers’ Hurdle. Owner Sean O’Driscoll has come to Cheltenham with high hopes for the past few years, but most people had written off the 11-year-old after no fewer than four previous defeats in the Stayers’.

To make it fifth time lucky in a Championship event is pretty much unheard of and is reminiscent of Sea Pigeon, who was beaten in three Champion Hurdles before winning as a 10-year-old in 1980 and repeating that feat a year later. I recall there being quite a lot of confidence in Home By The Lee a year ago, with talk of a change in the way he was working at home sparking hope that he could better the form he showed, and he had no chance of avoiding the fallen Crambo there, only for Bob Olinger, a horse he’d beaten on his previous two starts, to take the spoils.

Had he stood up that day, then he might be doing exactly what Sea Pigeon did 45 years earlier, and hardy perennials like him have long been what has made jump racing such an appealing sport to follow. It may not have been the result most expected, but perhaps it was a result that we needed and it’s wonderful to witness such moments.

On the same theme, the 40/1 win of White Noise wasn’t a complete shock, especially to those who felt she was unlucky to be run down by the better-fancied Kingston Queen on her previous start at Warwick. White Noise is owned by John Perriss who, with wife Penny, has owned horses with veteran trainer Kim Bailey for the guts of 40 years, but without much of a sniff of Cheltenham Festival success.

It’s also more than 30 years since Bailey (now training in partnership with Mat Nicholls) saddled the Champion Hurdle and Gold Cup winners at the same meeting, but both Perriss and Bailey retain all their enthusiasm for the sport and it was wonderful to see their patience and dedication rewarded by such an important, if belated success.

Hopefully, White Noise can continue to fly their flag high at the top level for years to come.

Was Willie out of order?

BIGGEST talking point on Thursday and into Friday here has been the decision by Willie Mullins to withdraw hot favourite Fact To File from the Ryanair and the comments he made about the ground when interviewed about that decision. My view is that, while it may well have been the correct decision to scratch Fact To File, the implied criticism of the state of the surface at Cheltenham was unfortunate and misleading.

Henry de Bromhead also took The Big Westerner out on account of the ground, for example, and it certainly wasn’t in favour of the mudlarks, but the vast majority are happy to race on ground on the soft side of good here in March, and the ground staff at Cheltenham have provided a very fair surface.

On the other hand, some have certainly overreacted to Willie’s words, particularly the phrase “If the ground’s going to be like this, we won’t bring them.”

That half-sentence has been taken out of context by some who should know better and suggests that Mullins is planning a boycott of the Festival, but when he talked about how hard it is to acquire and keep a certain kind of horse, for which good ground is unsuitable, he was referring to Fact To File and horses like him, who are frequently referred to as “old-fashioned chasers” and I understand that there is a particular stamp of horse which needs looking after in terms of the ground it is campaigned on.

It is this specific stamp of horse that Willie feels it is pointless bringing to a good-ground Cheltenham Festival. Others will disagree and there is certainly a debate to be had, but to conflate the argument with the notion of a blanket boycott is to ignore the argument being made.

Again, I don’t think Jon Pullin should be preparing his course to suit Willie Mullins to it is the objective to produce what we would call yielding ground for this fixture, and it should be remembered what a kicking Pullin and his team got for watering on the Tuesday evening a few years ago after the weather forecast changed.

We were promised more rain this week than was the case then, and it’s sod’s law that predicting the weather remains the least exact of sciences.

Damned if you do and damned if you don’t, I think Pullin has done a good job on the whole, but as usual, it’s the interpretation of a complaint that has caused 10 times more consternation than the complaint itself, and knee-jerk reactions aren’t helping to find a solution.