Inside Track: Ireland races away with Cheltenham team prize

Not all of the raging hot favourites obliged at Cheltenham; but not among the losers were Willie Mullins, Paul Townend, JP McManus and the Ireland team.

The Prestbury Cup goes to the country that has the most winners. That’s a three-horse race when France has runners, as was the case this year; but it is for all intents and purposes a joust between England and Ireland.

The trophy has been taken across the Irish Sea for six of the past seven years, and in the year that it wasn’t, it was shared.

It’s back here again after last week’s deliberations, 18 of the twenty-eight races going to horses trained in this part of the world. The definite signs are, that trend will continue for many years to come.

British racing is complaining that all the big owners from over there, the guys who don’t mind going up to two, three or four hundred thousand for a promising horse, are patronising Irish trainers and not their own country’s. That’s true, and it’s easy to understand the annoyance.

But it wouldn’t be like that if those owners weren’t getting results. They are, and the man who’s got most of the pricey steeds to take care of, is the one who’s winning most of the top prizes, Willie Mullins.

Once again the Carlow-based handler has finished leading trainer at the festival. Chief among his winners was Galopin Des Champs, successful in the meeting’s Blue Riband, the Gold Cup.

Its owners, however, wouldn’t be among the cohort the British complain about – Audrey and Greg Turley are from Dublin and would almost certainly be outbid if they ever got into a sales ring head-to-head with Rich Ricci, Malcolm Denmark, JP McManus or Kenny Alexander.

Before the big race Audrey told the ITV interviewer she was carrying a Child of Prague statuette in her bag. Whether it was for luck or to keep the rain away she didn’t say.

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Mullins’ jockey, Paul Townend, finished as leading jockey. Consensus among his former peers, AP McCoy, Ruby Walsh and Mick Fitzgerald – who were among the game’s greatest – was that that the ride Townend gave the Gold Cup winner was one of the best they’ve seen.

JP McManus finished leading owner, and here’s one the British can’t complain about. In addition to providing Irish trainers, many of them who wouldn’t figure in the top 20, with runners, the Limerick man has hundreds of horses in training in England. And as in Ireland, a lot of them mightn’t survive without his patronage.

While Mullins, Townend and McManus dominated, there was lots of room on the rostrum for other Irish trainers, jockeys and owners, some of them first-timers.

Like, 85-year-old John Kiely, who turned out his first winner. The mount of the Waterford veteran’s Like A Dream was taken by 18-year-old John Gleeson, who was also visiting the winners’ enclosure for the first time.

Liam McKenna and Ben Harvey, two who know their way around Dundalk’s all-weather, also rode their first winner at the meeting, as did DJ O’Keeffe and Michael O’Sullivan.

Rachael Blackmore brought up a double, one of her winners, Honeysuckle, the meeting’s most popular winner, even those who didn’t benefit from her 9/4 success likely to give her the vote.

As for your writer’s betting experience: not if the grass is a foot high will the lawn be again mowed before Cheltenham next year. My Northamptonshire friend had a beano, and, of course, said to me: “I told you so.”