Flipping heck! Thank goodness the Cheltenham Festival only happens once a year. There’s only so much chaos and controversy my liver can take. But oh boy, did the 230,000 racegoers who turned up have some good craic. Although Willie Mullins swept the board in the big races, nine UK-based trainers got on the score sheet, winning 13 races, just two short of the Irish. A big improvement on recent years.
If Thursday night’s post-racing horse sale at Cheltenham is anything to go by, however, the dominance of Irish trainers in the big races is set to continue. The star of the sale this year was a stallion called Goliath Du Berlais, who stands at Normandy-based stud Haras D’Etreham. Three of his sons sold for £400,000 and the fourth made £530,000. They have all won a single point-to-point in Ireland, beating other unknown quantities. Mind-boggling.
Three of these recruits are now predictably heading back to top yards in Ireland; Palinca will be trained by Henry de Bromhead, Monster Truck by Gordon Elliott and Monzon Sport by Willie Mullins. All should be horses to look out for in the future, although it wouldn’t surprise me if Mullins gives his recruit a year hacking around to allow further development. Mullins is a man of huge patience. The fact these potential stars are all French-bred must blow a chill wind through top Irish stud Coolmore. It wouldn’t surprise me if Goliath Du Berlais finds a new home in Tipperary before long.
As successful as the festival was, there were two big issues that shook things up a bit. The first was the race starting procedures, which tend to work well at quieter meetings but can get a bit fraught here. The stewards are now going to have to decide whether the jockey Nico de Boinville was guilty of ‘repeated racial abuse’ towards Irish amateur Declan Queally, which he denies, while lining up for the Turners Novices’ Hurdle.
Quite frankly, someone in the weighing room should have told Queally either to thump de Boinville on the nose or grow up, before he went whingeing to the stewards. Verbally abusing each other as they line up for crowded starts at the festival is what jockeys have always done. More’s the pity the broadcasters won’t allow us to listen to these pre-race spats.
There are four reasons why the starts at the festival get spicy. Firstly, the raucous atmosphere winds up the horses and the jockeys. Secondly, too many starts have the horses approaching the tapes around a bend, so those on the outside have to go faster than those on the inside just to get a level start. Thirdly, the jockeys end up cantering into the start because they are made to line up too far back from the starting tape. And fourthly, the starters, who are under a lot of pressure to get the horses away at the first attempt, start to fudge their own rules, which emboldens the jockeys to call their bluff and try to nick an advantageous start.
Whatever… I love chaotic starts. One aspect of being a great jockey is to boss the jostling for position before a race, and it’s all part of the theatre of jump racing. But I suppose a combination of standing starts and Grand Prix-style lights might be the answer for those who don’t share my preference for a more Circus Maximus approach.
Much more disappointing was the withdrawal due to unsuitable ground of Six-milebridge, Uncle Bert and Fact To File on Thursday. All had a serious chance and frustrated punters will have been left looking forlornly at their accumulator bets. The trainers were no doubt doing the right thing to look after the future of their horses’ front leg flexor tendons. Some horses hit the ground harder than others, and while the patches of ground at the top of the hill were safe enough for the 111 horses that did run on Thursday, the ground was clearly too fast for the three not allowed to take part. Trust me, it only takes one stride to concuss a tendon. The normally horizontal Mullins was probably being polite when he said: ‘We were promised watering and I’m not sure that has been done.’
The fact these potential stars are all French-bred must blow a chill wind through top Irish stud Coolmore
The racecourse, I suspect, had an eye on a weather forecast that said rain would arrive at some point. There was also the memory of a couple of years ago when the racecourse did water overnight and then got slagged off by champion trainer Paul Nicholls after it rained as well. Unfortunately for everyone this year, the rain didn’t arrive in time on Thursday.
The biggest talking point going into the festival, however, was the sudden departure of Lord (Charles) Allen, the very short-lived chairman of the British Horseracing Authority. That made the appearance on Friday of former defence minister Ben Wallace all the more interesting. Wallace threw his hat into the ring for the role in 2024 but was overlooked. The idea was presumably that if the BHA went for a leftie like Allen, he’d be able to suck up to the government. What a disaster that plan has turned out to be: unable to bring racing’s many factions together, Allen felt he had no option but to step down.
Racing is going to be a much-diminished sport once this government, with their affordability checks, has continued to drive punters into the welcoming arms of the black market, and destroyed its grass roots with the absurd trail-hunting ban. So they might as well bite the bullet and go back to Wallace on bended knee, irrespective of his political history. There is absolutely no way he will reapply for the job, when he wasn’t even offered the courtesy of an interview last time, but I think he’d take it on if anyone had the humility to ask him now.
Join me at The Betfred Derby Festival on Friday 5 June
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