RTÉ Racing had the dream team on Tuesday for the 2021 Punchestown Festival. It’s still so very strange looking at an empty winners’ enclosure having been part of the celebrations in previous years.

However, up in the stands and well distanced without the requirement for masks, it was as near to normal as we have had this year as Hugh Cahill, Davy Russell, Jane Mangan and Ruby Walsh presented this year’s Festival coverage.

Over on RacingTV, poor Gary O’Brien and Donn McClean are still masked to the eyeballs in the booth beside the parade ring.

The battle for the jockeys’ title looks like fizzling out quickly. Paul Townend is back in his ‘riding out’ boots and Chacun Pour Soi is back with his fastest set of runners on.

“He showed the real horse today. A lot of people did a lot of hard work to get me back,” Townend tells Katie Walsh.

Brian Gleeson gets lucky with his Zoom call to Whitegrass Racing Syndicate’s Liam Cullinan in Ferbane. First he sees their Getaway Gorgeous run loose and withdrawn but Jazzaway does job at the business end of the race. “Unreal, one gone and we win on the bob! I’m on water now but I think I’ll be on more than water later!” Cullinan is a happy man.

In the Dooley Insurance Group Champion Novice Chase, Colreevy, recently covered to go in-foal, is responsible for the quote of the week. Hugh Cahill is sceptical of her chance. “If she’s been covered by Superman she might have a chance!” Cahill exclaims.

“She might just have been covered by Superman. My experience of Walk In The Park is that he’d put a cavity block in foal!” replies Russell. In foal or not, she’s too good for her better fancied rivals.

It has left a strange conundrum for the Flynns who had decided to retire Colreevy as a Grade 1-winning mare to breed. Yet, the desire of every NH breeder is to breed a Gold Cup winner. On this run, with her mares’ allowance, there is every likelihood that Colreevy could start at single-figure odds for next season’s Gold Cup. She’s only eight. Maybe we’ll say a prayer Walk In The Park shot a blank this time!

Angles

There has been much debate over new but often irritating camera angles to cover the big meetings. Punchestown lends itself well to the side on jeep camera. Small fields suit the side road angles very well.

You could ride alongside and see everything in the Champion Two Mile Chase and in Colreevy’s Grade 1 and as Clan Des Obeaux set out his stall. The ‘up in the air’ is kept to a minimum though used for some of cross country but a bit too far from the action. Richard Pugh misses little and you get a brief history of Punchestown thrown in during some of the cross-country races.

As a pundit, Ruby Walsh, as has been said many times all year, is out on his own. You learn so much about how to ride a track and how a jockey thinks. He knows a horse is about to come off the bridle before it comes obvious to the viewer.

On Wednesday, Ruby is off to the masked gang on RacingTV and Barry Geraghty is an able deputy with Ted Walsh. Paul Nicholls joins by Zoom, and his enterprise is rewarded with the Gold Cup success for Clan Des Obeaux. Sam Twiston Davies is a good interviewee recalling his first trip to Punchestown “When I was 16 and thought the game was easy.”

The Nationwide team have a lovely feature that evening with John Nallen and all the connections of the Gold Cup and Grand National-winning team and Brian Gleeson also paid a visit to the Minella man for today’s feature. You could not but feel good listening to his delight at this season’s success. “To get the Minella name on the biggest sporting moment of 2021, imagine what Nike would do to get that.”

“I wake up every night, the missus thinks there’s something wrong with me, did this happen to me, am I dreaming? Just unbelievable.”

Son Jack got some superstar treatment too. “That was my Gold Cup and Grand National – to say Rachael Blackmore rode a horse around here with my son Jack.”

On Thursday, Andy McNamara joins the team and Ruby returns. Willie Mullins pulls a rabbit from the hat after 497 days in hiding with Klassical Dream romping away with the Stayers’ Hurdle, a horse who was entered in a two-mile novice chase at Christmas. He deflects the praise to his team of son Patrick and David Casey. “I wasn’t listening to them.” Ahem?

A masked Mullins interview is the order of the week. Energumene sweeps to victory to end the Thursday coverage. The sight of a fairly peed off-looking Rachael leading Captain Guinness back up the run-in finishes talk of the jockeys’ title.

Cahill gets excited again waving a page on which he’s written: Energumene – Champion Chase winner 2022. “That horse will beat Shishkin!”

Andy puts it a more intellectual context by digging out the meaning of Energumene. “It’s a kindred spirit of yourself – loud and obnoxious!” Not looking at any one in particular!