The odds are short ... and against me

FOR a half-wit racegoer like me, it was an exhilarating moment in sport. Granted permission to stand on the track for the first race at Cheltenham, I was close enough to the underbelly of a horse to appreciate why the majority are gelded as they thunder at 40 miles an hour over spiky bundles of birch.

My marvelling at the spectacle ground to an abrupt halt, however, when my horse, the favourite Justified faded under the challenge of Arcalis. To rub salt in the weeping wound, my companion, a seasoned sports hack, gleefully announced he had backed the winner at 33/1. Bah humbug. Whoever said everyone loves a winner?

My losing streak continued until the third race when Brave Inca obliged by coming in third. Last of the big spenders, my €2.50 each way bet meant I finished up with the princely sum of, you guessed it, €2.50. If I had only heeded the advice of the avuncular Charlie McCreevy, when he earlier warned Cheltenham was the hardest course to make money on. Happy as a pig in the proverbial, he was in attendance with wife Noleen, for his "winter break."

"I always take holidays this time of year," he said when asked how he had swung the time off from his big job in Brussels.

Fellow Fianna Fáil-er, Sports Minister John O'Donoghue, began the day badly. He had backed Irish-trained War of Attrition in the second race, but declared himself "not a big punter." Neither was he prepared to wager any bets on his Cabinet colleague, Micheál Martin, losing his Cabinet seat in the fall-out from the nursing home scandal.

"He's as honest a Cork man as you can get," he said, which, coming from a cute Kerry hoor, is open to interpretation. His money this week will be going on Beef or Salmon and Moscow Flyer, and any Dermot Weld-trained horses. Why? "If Dermot Weld was playing marbles, you'd have to take him seriously," was the Ministerial advice.

Horse racing aficionado, Hector Ó hEochagáin was Amu in Cheltenham, singing the praises of a festival which opens its arms to "mountainy men with money in mattresses" while actor James Nesbitt was spotted sporting a moustache Colonel Mustard would be proud of.

Over us all hovered a plane with a message for the Prime Minister: "Bollocks to Blair." It was a warning from the fox hunting lobby that he may not receive an Irish welcome were he to turn up at the totes.

What were the odds on that, I wonder?