Danny Mullins carried shoulder high after his win on Flooring Porter© Photo Healy Racing
Looking back at Cheltenham there is an overwhelming sense that when it comes to this Festival the whole is so much greater than the sum of its parts. As you would expect there were scintillating performances, most notably Constitution Hill in the Festival opener and A Plus Tard in the Gold Cup on Friday, but there were many more anti climaxes and disappointments across the week that should in theory outweigh the positives, but they don’t.
Wednesday in particular was a bit of a mess. I don’t for one minute blame the new clerk of the course John Pullin for the watering of the track after Tuesday’s racing. The ground had dried quickly during the opening day and the glorified tipsters that masquerade as weather forecasters had moved their predictions for Wednesday’s rainfall down from 10mm to 5mm. In reality even their original guesstimate was off the mark as 21mm was the true figure.
The ground itself probably wasn’t actually that bad - we’re not exactly talking Limerick at Christmas - but bad enough to ruin the most exciting Champion Chase in living memory. I was so looking forward to seeing Shishkin, Energumene and possibly Chacun Pour Soi come over the last in contention but from halfway it was a damp squib. Perhaps it was something more than just the ground that went wrong for Shishkin, but so far nothing else has shown up.
The Champion Bumper was another race that on paper had it all. I don’t think we’ve ever seen as much untapped potential in any previous renewal, and despite most of the cream rising to the top in the end with Facile Vega beating American Mike, I was still left feeling robbed of the true classic I had envisaged. Chicaning their way around dolled off sections of the track in abysmal conditions certainly took the gloss off it as a spectacle.
The biggest disappointment of all on Wednesday was the defeat of Tiger Roll in the Cross Country race. There can be no doubt the weather was a contributing factor for his defeat but to get beaten by a well-backed stablemate in the same ownership was certainly avoidable.
Michael O’Leary and Gordon Elliott are nobody's fools and they must have known full well that Delta Work had the potential to spoil the party, particularly on heavy ground. If Tiger Roll had prevailed and won at the Festival for a record-equalling sixth time on his final start it would have been such a magical end to an astonishing career for one of the most-loved horses of recent times. It appeared that it was only after the race when it dawned on O’Leary that they’d made a mistake in running both horses.
Gordon Elliott’s runners overall were very disappointing and, aside from his one-two in the Cross Country race, his only other success was with 50/1 shot Commander Of Fleet in the Coral Cup Handicap. He sent a very strong team over but like at the Dublin Racing Festival last month his horses came up short. Across the four days at Cheltenham the stable had 20 runners that started at 7/1 or shorter which were beaten.
Elliott’s poor week was more than compensated for, from an Irish perspective at least, by Willie Mullins’ record-breaking haul of ten winners. The Champion trainer is unparalleled in his ability to produce his horses at their peak for the big days and, but for a last fence mishap for Galopin Des Champ and a short-head defeat for Gaelic Warrior, he could have won 12 of the 28 races.
Henry de Bromhead is also pretty good at getting his horses to perform to their best on the big days and winning back-to-back Champion Hurdles and Gold Cups is testament to his prowess as a trainer. The pressure on both himself and his team ahead of the Champion Hurdle in particular cannot be underestimated. Honeysuckle is no ordinary mare and the expectations grow exponentially each time she extends her incredible unbeaten record. Of course the pressure they are under in the preparation of Honeysuckle for her assignments is offset to a large degree in knowing that the wonder mare is partnered by the equally brilliant Rachael Blackmore.
Blackmore’s meteoric rise through the ranks shows no signs of stopping and adding the Gold Cup to her already impressive CV is fantastic for the sport and for women in sport generally. The one surprising element to Blackmore’s success is how few other women in racing have followed her lead. She is still the only female professional jump jockey winning races in Ireland and while there are a dozen or more in the UK they are largely ignored when it comes to big meetings like Cheltenham. Bryony Frost only picked up two rides across the week and Isabel Williams and Victoria Malzard with one ride each were the only others to get a mount.
The British-trained horses did far better than I had expected. Winning less than half the races (ten wins) mightn’t seem like much of an achievement but I honestly feared beforehand that it could have been close to a whitewash, like we saw on Gold Cup Day. One interesting aspect to the British success is how few of their top riders got in on the act. None of the top eight jockeys in their championship table rode a winner at the Festival.
Constitution Hill’s performance in the opening race of the Festival set the bar extremely high for the week and despite a number of other high class efforts - Honeysuckle, Stattler, Sir Gerhard, L’Homme Presse, Facile Vega, Galopin Des Champs, Allaho, Flooring Porter, Vauban, State Man and A Plus Tard - it was never bettered. His visually spectacular display was backed up by the clock with his time of 3m 44.35sec not only setting a new track record but also beating Honeysuckle’s Champion Hurdle time by nearly 6 seconds.
As the focus now switches to the upcoming Festivals at Aintree, Fairyhouse and Punchestown, where we will hopefully get to see all these stars back in action, there is already a flicker of excitement anticipating how next year’s Cheltenham might shape up. The likes of Constitution Hill, Honeysuckle, Vauban and Sir Gerhard facing off in the 2023 Champion Hurdle and A Plus Tard being taken on by the exciting Galopin Des Champs L’Homme Presse and Stattler in his Gold Cup defence are mouth-watering prospects. And all the hoping and dreaming begins again.
