Punchestown Festival © Photo Healy Racing
The phrase ‘Ireland’s Cheltenham’ will be used a lot this week to describe the Punchestown festival, and it’s rubbish really: Cheltenham is Ireland’s Cheltenham. It’s a peculiarity of Irish racing that it’s most important meeting of the year doesn’t actually take place here. But pointing that out doesn’t diminish Punchestown’s own status one iota.
The modern day festival is very much a modern phenomenon in terms of the Grade 1 opportunities it provides and it has been cleverly moulded into a programme that concentrates National Hunt racing’s best action into a relatively narrow time-period. Arguments about whether or not that period is too narrow, relegating much of the rest of the season to prelude status, aren’t irrelevant but the reality is that Punchestown is an appropriate and distinctive finale to the campaign, if not an end in itself.
There is a recognisable pulse to every festival though and there’s little doubt that Punchestown has its own perfect full-stop this week with the prospect of a clash between Jezki and Hurricane Fly in Friday’s Champion Hurdle. Reducing a clutch of Grade 1’s to warm-up status might be putting it a bit strong but anticipation of a head-to-head champion clash on Friday will be at the back of everyone’s mind throughout the week.
It looks like Willie Mullins’s call to switch his outstanding novices Vautour and Faugheen in terms of distance will add another layer of intrigue while the gap between Gigginstown and JP McManus for the owners championship isn’t wide enough to make it irrelevant. Even though, of course, it doesn’t matter to either side, much.
It’s another reality though that so much in terms of atmosphere and attendance depends on the weather. Doubt that and look at the sixteen thousand plus that took in last week’s National at Fairyhouse.
In more practical terms, there is also the impact the elements have in terms of ground conditions although it is interesting to note Punchestown’s determination to get into line with Cheltenham and Aintree in keeping the going on the soft side of good whenever they can. The days of fast-ground festivals are gone.
That will produce gripes, especially from those in possession of horses that love to hear their feet rattle, but it is also a reflection of the political realities that racing has to take on board, and that’s the same either side of the Irish Sea.
Nevertheless comments last week about the Wetherby track’s plans to trial flat racing due to supposed uncertainty about the future of jump racing overall sounded somewhat alarmist. “Who knows where National Hunt racing will be in twenty five years time, if anywhere with the do-gooders and things like that,” said the clerk of the course.
The ‘do-gooders’ reference felt off-beam. It’s only extreme elements that appear to have designs on ending racing. Most responsible animal welfare groups I’ve heard appear to only want to make an essentially unsafe sport as safe as is possible, hardly an unworthy and dangerous ambition. But maybe such comments, and such long-term plans, are another reflection of the pressure jump racing in Britain can feel itself under.
Even allowing for all that there remains a sense that the flat campaign only really gets under way once the jump guys and gals are finished, a sense emphasised by this weekend’s classics at Newmarket. Whatever about the trials, the Guineas really do represent a start to the flat season proper and it won’t be just Irish eyes that will focus in on Australia and his first start of 2014.
So much of the 2,000 Guineas revolves around how the son of Galileo and Ouija Board lives up to the billing given to him by Aidan O’Brien.
Concerns about Kingman in the dip, and possibly on the ground, remain valid but if Australia can get the better of him, Toormore, Kingston Hill and the others in style over a mile, then we really could be on the verge on another special season in the manner of Sea The Stars and Frankel. That’s a big ‘if’ however and from a punting point of view Australia’s stablemate War Command still looks a value alternative.
And finally, it’s amazing what gets advertised, but usually behind what’s being flogged is at least a presumption of a market. So it was interesting to see racing’s trade paper recently containing an ad’ for a specialist investigator offering solutions in “Technical Surveillance Countermeasures.” Apparently the service includes location of illicit eavesdropping devices, international people tracing, and covert video and audio.
Honestly, where could the market be? Just think the answer though: don’t say or do anything.
