Ruby Walsh: Goshen and Jamie Moore have the chance to start afresh

Jamie Moore riding Nassalam clear the last to win The One More For The Moore's Juvenile Hurdle at Fontwell Park Racecourse earlier this week. Picture: Alan Crowhurst/PA 

The hurlers of Limerick and Waterford take centre stage this weekend and, rightly, HRI have moved Navan’s fixture from tomorrow to next Friday to stick with the tradition of leaving All-Ireland final days blank. It is some semblance of normality and, just before Christmas, many in the sport will be happy with a blank Sunday.

The action in Ireland this afternoon at Fairyhouse is pretty average but, like every sport, the action can’t be high-end all the time. We have the quantity but just not the quantity of quality to make that possible.

But, if you think only eight teams make the hurling competitive and right now the Dubs tower above every else in the football, racing’s quality versus quantity debate is in line with most other sports.

There is some quality racing across the pond where this afternoon, in keeping with the England’s more liberal approach to exiting the Covid-19 lockdown, Cheltenham racecourse will welcome 2,000 fans.

The Caspian Caviar Gold Cup, at 1.50pm, is the second leg of Cheltenham’s winter chasing double, coming four weeks after the Paddy Power Gold Cup. Coole Cody will bid to complete the double but Al Dancer, who was third behind him in November, could be a formidable foe today.

The feature race is the International Hurdle. It has quite a deep field but there is little doubt that Goshen will be centre of attention. It is just shy of nine months since he faced up the last hurdle on the final day of the Cheltenham Festival with the Triumph Hurdle at his mercy.

Racegoers back at Cheltenham yesterday. The track is expecting around 2,000 to attend today’s meeting. Picture: Healy Racing

Jamie Moore had ridden Goshen with aggression and unwavering faith in his ability all through that Triumph renewal. As fast as Harry Skelton on Allmankind had wanted to go, Jamie never took back. Instead, he pushed his main rivals, Aspire Tower and Allmankind, on from as early as the third hurdle and had them galloped into submission well before disaster struck.

As I should know better than most, whilst it may have felt like a disaster at the time for Jamie Moore, his parting of the ways at the last with Goshen was far from that. A sickening setback, an action that can never be changed and a feeling he will never forget. But it was not a disaster.

Disappointment, anger, embarrassment and regret will all have been the emotions Jamie experienced as he left Prestbury Park last March: disappointment at losing the biggest race of your horse’s season when you were about to be crowned champion; anger at why it happened to you; embarrassment as you think about what every Tom, Dick and Harry is saying about you; regret of not taking some other course of action.

In the immediate aftermath of the Festival, Jamie used social media to apologise to everyone he had let down by being unseated from Goshen.

It was a brave and honest move from someone who had only been a player in an unfortunate event. I felt, and understood, his pain as he exited the racecourse that day the loneliest man in Gloucester, one who could not be consoled and for whom time was the only healer.

That last-hurdle fall will have consumed Jamie’s thoughts for a quite a while. Not all day every day but, like any bad experience, at quiet times Goshen will have ghosted into his mind. Why did I kick when I could have sat? Why did I not slow down and pop it or why did I do what I did? Questions he will never be able to answer because he did what he thought was right and, to me too, it looked right at the time.

He acted in good faith and got a poor outcome - the average experience of life, not a disaster, which is a sudden act or catastrophe that causes great damage or loss of life.

We often lose the run of ourselves with how we describe sporting events or experiences we encounter but when you look at this rationally, Goshen and Jamie Moore have the chance, starting today, to start afresh and, who knows, they may even end up winning something bigger in the future. They will never get that Triumph Hurdle back. There is no compensation for that, but it is gone, it is history and, for now, the future still holds hope.