Lord Lariat leads the field away from the packed stands in the Irish Grand National© Photo Healy Racing
Monday’s Irish Grand National was in many ways close to the perfect race. Turning for home after over three miles of racing we still had almost half the field bang in contention for the €500,000 in prizes and most punters at least got a decent run for their money.
While Lord Lariat’s 40/1 victory meant the vast majority of punters left empty handed it was a more foreseeable result, with the benefit of hindsight, than the previous week’s success of Noble Yeats at Aintree. Lord Lariat was representing last season’s winning yard and had already scored twice before over the course at Fairyhouse. Coincidentally both Grand National winners are mere seven-year-olds but Lord Lariat is much more experienced having first gone chasing as far back as January 2020.
It was an amazing achievement for local trainer Dermot McLoughlin with his small string to win back-to-back Irish Grand Nationals (150/1 Freewheelin Dylan in 2021) which had last been achieved by his old boss Jim Dreaper in the 1970s when he won three-in-a-row.
Looking back through the records for the race it’s astonishing to think that Tom Dreaper won seven Irish Grand Nationals in a row in the 1960s, including in 1962 when Kerforo won with Dermot McLoughlin’s father Liam in the saddle. We are constantly talking about the dominance of Willie Mullins and Gordon Elliott in the modern era but obviously there have been similar periods of dominance in the past.
Gordon Elliott really is having a poor run of luck at the major Festivals so far this season and he again hit the crossbar in the Irish Grand National with Frontal Assault finishing second. Oddly, only two of his ten runners in the race completed the course.
Of course Elliott’s luck has in part meant that Willie Mullins is cleaning up. The strength in depth of his squad of horses this season appears to have reached new levels and his horses’ performance in Sunday’s Tattersalls Sales Bumper rather sums up why he is the perennial Champion trainer.
As Richard Pugh, of p2p.ie and Tattersalls, pointed out on Twitter Willie Mullins and his buyer Harold Kirk purchased some five horses out of 1,000 on offer at the Sale last year and three of these horses finished 1-2-3 in the €100,000 race on Sunday.
With a couple of better jumps in the home straight in the Grand National Mullins’ Gaillard Du Mesnil might have won the big one too.
Mullins traditionally farms the end of season feature events at Punchestown so it will be no surprise to see a few other trainers do a Nicky Henderson on it and put their horses out to grass rather than take him on next week. Henderson and owner Michael Buckley have decided against running their star novice Constitution Hill against Honeysuckle in the Paddy Power Champion Hurdle and while it would have added greatly to Punchestown it is probably a prudent decision.
While most racing fans would have expected this decision from Henderson it seems like the announcement that Cheltenham are contemplating adding a fifth day at the Festival caught many by surprise. It appears inevitable that this will happen at some stage and, whether or not that is 2024, it makes perfect sense from a commercial point of view and ultimately money talks.
I don’t share the fears of many that this will dilute the Festival or impact negatively on it in any major way. Look at Fairyhouse’s Easter Festival which takes place over three days and revolves around one single race. Galway, similarly drags seven days out of two feature races. Cheltenham has five stand alone feature races across the Festival and a number of other high class supporting races, so five days should work fine.
Ultimately, Cheltenham will have to try a fifth day at some point. The venue has more or less reached capacity for the four days which leaves the racecourse with two choices from a commercial viewpoint, either increase the prices further or add a fifth day. The cost of attending a day at Cheltenham is already towards the upper end of elite sporting events so any significant hike in the pricing would probably have a negative impact, whereas the fifth day automatically adds a significant chunk to the racecourse’s bottom line.
