Paul Townend took the top rider title for the first time after Al Boum Photo’s successful defence of the Magners Cheltenham Gold Cup gave him a fifth winner of the week.

Immortality doesn’t come easily and, ultimately, Paul Townend’s mount had his head in front where it matters, writes Darren Norris.

Well, it has finally come: Gold Cup day. The biggest day of the season. Well, I always felt it was. This year’s race, with a small field, looks to be quite open, writes Ruby Walsh

Willie Mullins finished Wednesday on a high note, likening Ferny Hollow’s win in the bumper to scoring a goal just before half-time. I take heart from this. The second half is about to begin and I’m still in the game.

Growing up in Ballyclough, Co Cork, you couldn’t get Laura Fitzgerald off the farm.

Foot and mouth - 2001. A year and three words I and anybody in agriculture or horse racing will never forget.

Willie Mullins described Un De Sceaux as a “once-in-a-lifetime horse” as he confirmed the multiple Grade One-winner’s retirement following injury.

Sean Doyle told the Irish Examiner that as Aer Lingus takes delivery of new, smaller aircraft with fewer seats, it will reevaluate prospects for transatlantic flights.

Last week was the start of the new race times – there were a good few of them in the UK - and I think, for people who were viewing racing on the whole, it was a better experience.

PLEASE, please Willie run Benie Des Dieux in the Stayers’ Hurdle at Cheltenham and give us the battle that will light up the festival.

So much will happen between lunch time today and dinner time tomorrow that looking backwards to last week and as far back as last weekend seems pointless with how much the future has to offer.

Bestselling author Isabel Allende talks to Rowena Walsh about life, grief, and why it’s never too late to fall in love

From Willie Mullins’ point of view, Allaho in the Beginners’ Chase and Jon Snow and The Big Getaway in the maiden hurdles are the key horses this weekend.

Veganuary and Operation Transformation are not running this weekend, they are running all month or for even longer.

Peter Jackson gets over the gain line, behind the headline.

Mr Walsh - who orchestrated the creation of International Airlines Group (IAG) through the merger of British Airways and Spanish carrier Iberia - will step down from the role and board of IAG on March 26 and retire on June 30.

What What did we learn from the Christmas racing period? Lots we already knew, and a few things that we should have known.

There’s a brilliant day’s racing to look forward to, with quality racing spread across the 10 meetings which are scheduled to take place in Ireland and Britain.

Last Sunday was a blustery day, a status orange weather warning was in place for a lot of west and southern counties but in racing the only storm was over the TV coverage Irish racing got last week.

Our writers select 10 sports books for your Christmas list.

Quality. That’s all it takes it to attract a crowd.

The family of a missing Dublin couple, believed to have been murdered, have said they just want their bodies back.

Whatever about horses going from one stable to another, for jockeys racing can be one big merry-go-round, and that was never more in evidence than it is right now.

Charleville hurley maker Tony McCauliffe lives and breathes GAA. He inherited the North Cork business that makes custom hurleys for some of Munster’s biggest stars from his father, writes Ellie O’Byrne.

One evening a couple of years back, Christy Dixon was listening to Clare FM from his home in Dublin when Joan Hanrahan played a slow-air track, ‘An Fhuinseogigín Rua’, on her show The West Wind. Dixon had learned the song going to school in Mullagh in west Clare but the memory was even more poignant because it reminded him of his time playing music with the famed Willie Clancy.

In her new book, Valerie Cox meets Ireland’s elder statespeople to see just how far we’ve come as a country

A frail 82-year-old woman Bridget McDermott balanced her walking stick in her hand with the heavy wooden frame bearing the photographs of the three children she lost in the Stardust fire.

Alice de la Cour talks to artist Danny Vincent Smith, whose art has its own unique style

For the third time in four years, Gordon Elliott saddled the winner of the thetote.com Galway Plate. After Donagh Meyler and Lord Scoundrel in 2016 and Mark Enright and Clarcam 12 months ago, this time it was Luke Dempsey in the saddle, winning aboard Borice.

The ease of their navigation from the group will both delight and worry Dublin manager Mick Bohan in equal measures.

Whatever the turn of events against Tipperary, Laois will still fill a few seconds when the All-Ireland hurling championship comes to a halt next month and the TV montage used to sum it all up is assembled out in Montrose.

Back in the 1970s, a few years after Bob Dylan released Blood on the Tracks, he was being interviewed about how it was such an outstanding album.

In a small workshop in Bruff, the ancestral birthplace of John F. Kennedy, Willie Bulfin crafts a tool that predates history, the hurley.

The National Hunt season that has just finished was a very strange one. At times it felt like the season would never get going as we waited and waited for the skies to open. For us in racing, they never really did, but hopefully for the flat season ahead they won’t open now.

I had no inkling that it was going to happen, but I must say I wasn’t entirely surprised to learn of Michael O’Leary’s decision to phase out his Gigginstown operation.

Three men jailed for violent burglaries in rural county Limerick seven years ago have launched appeals against their convictions.

How do you know when it’s over? In sport, every sportsperson has to keep trying to improve. Someone sets a standard - for me that was AP McCoy - and that was the level you had to try to achieve. When he retired, all of a sudden you realise you had to try to stay ahead of the younger jockeys coming up behind you.

Ruby Walsh hopes to continue to play a part for Willie Mullins' stable after he stunned the racing world when announcing his retirement from the saddle at Punchestown.

After 24 very good years, yesterday I bowed out after winning the Punchestown Gold Cup on Kemboy.

I don’t understand the betting for today’s feature race, the Punchestown Gold Cup.

I have some great rides to look forward on the opening day of the Punchestown festival, it’s a brilliant week and I can’t wait for it to get underway.

There are few races of any significance which do not adorn Willie Mullins’ CV and, after yesterday’s Boylesports Irish Grand National, there is one less.