Henry De Bromhead© Photo Healy Racing
George Harrison isn't an immediate spot as Henry De Bromhead's doppelganger but it's been forcibly pointed out to me that the media has been so myopic in its John & Paul love-in with Messrs Mullins and Elliott this season that we've overlooked the third virtuoso on Irish racing's magical mystery tour. One respected racing professional, who isn't from Waterford, and insists he barely knows the trainer, seethed indignantly on Sunday : "He's the real story, how he's stepped it up; but it's just like George in the Beatles, always in the shadows."
There's a Hank Marvin joke in there somewhere, and just In case anyone's tempted to weep it should be pointed out that weeping for a Beatle is silly and that any such sympathy for 'Hare' De Bromhead should be placed in the context that it's the last thing he either wants or needs.
Considering the statement came on the back of a Grade 1 double for Petit Mouchoir and Some Plan, it's hard not to suspect too an element of jumping on the Magic Bandwagon. But there is undeniably a sense that the overwhelming focus on the battle for the trainers championship has meant De Bromhead's campaign has been comparatively overlooked. By any standard it continues to be remarkable.
After a high-profile split with his most important owner, De Bromhead has bounced back to such effect he has already recorded his best ever tally for a season and can target Cheltenham with a genuine Champion Hurdle hope and a Gold Cup dark-horse in last week's impressive Thyestes winner Champagne West.
An innately reasonable man with a neat line in self-depreciation, De Bromhead invariably deflects praise. But the improvement shown by Petit Mouchoir this season, and Champagne West in particular, can hardly be coincidental. Champagne West's jumping had looked to fall apart before moving and there was one shuddering mistake in the Thyestes that made talk of Cheltenham, never mind Aintree, seem a potential one-way ticket. But who knows about the Gold Cup now.
As for the Champion Hurdle, there are some very clever analysts who reckon it was only Petit Mouchoir's raw ability which allowed him maintain a cut-throat gallop on Sunday and that the one length margin over Footpad was immensely flattering to the runner up. My own much less clever view is that if Faugheen gets to Cheltenham, his talent is exceptional enough to allow him win even in circumstances that won't have seen him race in close to 14 months.
But that still leaves the real fascinating topic from the weekend - who in racing gets to be Ringo?
And now to The Man: all major sports are to varying degrees also industries. Racing however contains an overlap like nothing else. And the bottom-line reality is that industry usually trumps sport when there's enough money involved.
That's why, for instance, any campaign to prevent Kempton from being sold off is long odds to succeed. Such a move would be a nod to sport, which for those of us with a sentimental bent would be very welcome. Yet preserving the King George at its traditional home and maintaining a valuable racing surface are sporting considerations which in business terms are basically indulgent.
Because the Christmas meeting apart, Kempton's role is basically that of a large and mostly deserted studio which facilitates the pumping out of second-rate racing for a pictures audience to bet on. That generates loads and can be done from anywhere.
For the vast majority of the betting public racing is a television experience. Attendance is irrelevant. Crowds may provide vital atmosphere at football matches but that is mostly a superfluous element for those betting the horses.
Here in Ireland everyone knows TV money is the track's lifeblood, not the turnstiles. It's betting on those TV pictures and the resultant levies on online and offshore betting which is closing the gap between betting tax revenue and what's being pumped into the Horse & Greyhound Fund as on- course bookmaking dies on its feet with bookies basically playing the exchanges like everyone else.
Digital reality means that's a pattern only likely to accelerate and it's a pattern which will only emphasise how racecourses produce pictures for an audience which couldn't care less about how many are on the ground at tracks they probably wouldn't be able to find in an atlas.
So where's the hard-nosed future in that for Kempton and its heritage and vaunted surface? Or romantic aspirations to suddenly make Londoners more aware of a track they've managed to rub along without paying any attention to for over a century?
In Ireland the idea of more all-weather handicaps, either at Dundalk alone, or another track, may be anathema from a sporting point of view but from an industry aspect it's hard to argue with.
When a thousand people show up at Dundalk, and bookmakers there barely hold five grand a race, yet a TV audience can help generate half a million on the exchanges on that same race, with a consequent levy dividend, then the business argument is pretty bombproof.
Some very different arguments surround the disqualification of the Noel Meade trained Champoleon from a Punchestown race in 2015 and they may not be finished yet which is bad news for anyone who had to wade through the lengthy Turf Club report released on the matter last week.
Trudging through page after page of caffeinated horse wee, and definitions of same which have been 'legalled' to within an inch of being indecipherable, is no one's idea of a good time. It also highlights how in Ireland's disciplinary system, even a nondescript maiden can produce a saga which seems never-ending, and over a substance most everyone seems to agree is very minor too.
But perhaps the overall conclusion to be drawn is that since racing's doping controls are starting from a relatively clean-slate then it's important that the systems being put in place now are watertight, both in terms of efficacy and definition, and are seen to be so.
Finally, leave the Hurricane Fly bronze alone. It's a little different, and from head on 'The Fly' looks he might be on something a lot stronger than caffeine. From the side though there's an impression of fluidity and movement that's impressively captured. And there's nothing wrong with different, right George?
