A Zoom call at 8pm on the Tuesday night of Galway is not somewhere we expected to find ourselves in 2020.

Unable to meet in person, we had owners from Nova Scotia to New Ross join us on a Zoom call to discuss the Galway Plate ahead of the run of our own Cabaret Queen. It’s difficult to be honest, how do you recreate the craic of a day at the races by peering at tiny boxes on a laptop screen?

Even a good joke lands as empty as the stands at Ballybrit as everyone is on mute (or maybe the jokes just weren’t any good!).

It’s important to stress there is something more important then racing taking place globally right now that deserves nothing less then our diligent attention. At the same time, it’s quite bizarre to be faced with a runner in the Galway Plate and the closest you’ll get to her in a SnapChat from her groom.

Cabaret Queen’s last run had been on the Thursday of Cheltenham before the end of the world as we know it. I had planned to stay for Friday but the social media negativity about racing got to me and I left early. Then although I live in London I arrived home on St. Patrick’s Day – I must have felt patriotic as I haven’t left since.

Fast forward a few months (largely spent hoping county selectors might spot me hurling in back garden), to a Kildare, Queen is back and we’re not. Cabaret Queen cost £13,000 and last year she won the Munster National – dream stuff. It’s a Grade 1 blacktype on a catalogue page too for a King’s Theatre mare (although I actually think that rule should be changed as it’s a Grade A handicap, but don’t tell Goffs or Tattersalls until I’ve got a few quid out of her foals!).

So she owes us the square root of nothing so we approached the Plate with expecting nothing and you’ll get everything you expected guaranteed.

Mad stuff

What a cracker she ran. Third. A Galway Plate? Mad stuff. Sonny Carey and Mary Kilduff did a lot of work with her pre-training and when you tee up the Willie Mullins team like that, I should have known they’d hit such a great opening drive! WhatsApp is great for syndicates and I thought my phone was speaking in morse code there was so many beeps afterwards.

Horses don’t win when I show up so it’s now been confirmed I’m a curse. I text Patrick Mullins that the lack of my presence could make all the difference. Quick as a flash he text back:

“Please can you explain the improvement in form, Mr. Mullins?”

“We removed the owners sir!”