The winners just keep flooding in
Francis Flood has been around the block a few times in racing, but few men have shown the sort of resilience and enthusiasm to keep a top-line career as a National Hunt trainer going in the same way he has.
Some might say that the ageless Wicklow handler is in the twilight of a glittering career, but Flood himself doesn’t look at it that way and while he has already experienced almost every high imaginable during his life as a trainer, he’s still plotting further successes and today at Haydock, his highly rated chaser GVA Ireland takes on a hot-pot field in the Red Square Vodka Gold Cup Chase, but this is only a precursor to ultimate aim of a crack at the Grand National at Aintree on April 14 next.
The Grangegon handler is a wily campaigner and knows a good performance today will almost certainly ensure the horse’s participation in the Aintree classic. In the week in which the weights for the National were announced and which saw GVA Ireland being allotted some 9st 13lb, the trainer’s initial reaction was that while it was “not a bad mark,” he admitted he was worried about the horse getting into the race, but was happy to see the nine-year-old so close to the handicap.
Today’s performance will tell a lot, but Flood himself remains confident that this could be the horse which finally nails one of the few races that has bypassed him during the course of his lengthy career.
He’s won Gold Cups, Arkle Chases, Irish Nationals and many other huge prizes over the years, but the Grand National is something he’d really like to do before even thinking of calling time on his training career.
Of the horse, Flood says that “he’s better over any distance more than three miles and he is a very sound jumper” and while he admits that with opponents such as Wild Cane Ridge, Kandjar d’Allier, Cornish Rebel, Leading Man and Royal Emperor lining up against his horse today that it is a very strong field, he is not sending the horse to England for the fun of it.
“Certainly the opposition is strong enough and the ground might be a bit softer than we’d like – my fellow would be good enough on yielding ground, but not bog-deep – but he certainly has a chance.
“Haydock is a good track to get a prep race for Aintree, but his jumping is very good anyway. You wouldn’t have any fears on that front because he’s a very, very safe jumper.
I’d certainly consider him a genuine Aintree contender and anyone who has ridden him says as much – that he’d have no problems there.
“Of course you need a little bit of luck going around there, but he’s as good as you’d expect from a horse with ambitions there. You can never be certain at Aintree until you try and win it; I mean you could win it one year and fall at the first the next year. But I think he’s an ideal sort for the race.”
It doesn’t seem like 35 years ago since Glencaraig Lady won the Cheltenham Gold Cup for Flood and certainly the trainer’s memories of that great day remain undiminished, even if he admits that he “could have done with a few more like her” over the years since the mare’s victory in racing’s blue riband chase.
He recalls buying her as a four-year-old and having reasonable hopes for her, but he admits he never thought she win a Gold Cup.
“I remember going to the sales in Ballsbridge back in those days and I knew a bit about her family – she was by the last entire Gold Cup winner, Fortina, who won the race in 1947 — and I thought she looked alright. I told Pat Doyle, who eventually bought her, that I thought he should buy her. She didn’t actually sell in the ring, but Pat bought her outside the ring afterwards. She was four when she came to us and she went on to win her bumper at Navan before having a few nice wins over hurdles and then winning here first chase at Naas.
“She graduated from there and she always showed a lot of promise from the first day she ran. We were pretty pleased about her alright, but we didn’t really know if she had a Gold Cup in her or anything like that.”
Flood first brought her to Cheltenham two years before her eventual triumph in the Gold Cup for the three mile novice chase and she was all-over the winner of the race before falling at the last. The following year she went to the festival again – to the Gold Cup this time – and was leading by five lengths at the third last when she fell again, leaving victory to the Tommy Carbery ridden L’Escargot.
For the 1971/2 season, however, she was in marvellous form in the run up to the festival, winning three of her four starts and although the team went to the Gold Cup in 1972 never having seen the mare complete a race at Prestbury Park, their high hopes were finally rewarded.
In a battling performance she out-fought Royal Toss and The Dikler to win in a blanket finish under a driving ride from Frank Berry and Flood confesses that they knew going into the race that they had a live chance of winning it.
“We knew from the year before she had a chance and from the moment she got home from that, she was prepared for the 1972 race and I remember the owner saying to me ‘I don’t mind if she doesn’t run all season as long as she’s right for the Gold Cup.’ ”
And right she was. It was a fantastic performance from the mare and, putting it into context, Flood points out that while Dawn Run later joined her as the only mare of the modern era to win a Gold Cup, his charge achieved it without the benefit of the mare’s weight allowance which would subsequently be introduced.
“I think there were only ever four mares won the Gold Cup and Dawn Run was the only one to do it subsequently. She had the mare’s allowance then which I think probably swung it in her favour the year she won,” he notes.
Flood had “an awful job” to keep the mare sound after her victory as she came back from the race “badly jarred up” and, sadly, she never ran again. She became a broodmare and her most notable progeny was Glencaraig Glen, who won a flat race at Leopardstown as a three-year-old and later a chase at Tramore, but she was, in the words of the trainer, “only very average.”
But the great Glencaraig Lady victory was far from the end of the trainer’s Cheltenham glory days as, just over a decade later, a horse called Bobsline arrived on the scene and he was to turn out to be one of the most successful horses of his era.
“He won a total of 26 races for us and he was a fantastic performer and we kept him around the place here for many years after he retired. He won six races as a novice and he went to Cheltenham for the Arkle well fancied and he won that in what was a fantastic race with Noddy’s Ryde,” Flood recalls.
In actual fact, the race was run on the same day as the Champion Hurdle which was won by Dawn Run. Bobsline’s victory meant it was a bloodbath for the bookies as the Irish had backed their horses in single and double bets and cleaned out the ring.
But that year’s Arkle is remembered as a classic Ireland v England head-to-head and it went right down to the wire. Noddy’s Ryde forced the pace throughout and when he quickened at the second last only Bobsline was able to go with him. The two were as one up the straight and Frank Berry just got the Irish horse home by a whisker.
The following year Bobsline took on the mighty Badsworth Boy and the 4/6 favourite was all-over a winner three out when he crumpled on landing and handed a third Champion Chase to Monica Dickinson’s horse.
But he, like others from the Grangecon yard such as Ebony Jane, Garoupe and many, many others kept Francis Flood’s name at the top of the pile and theirs is the mantle GVA Ireland will today try to embellish.
“You’re always trying to find a right one,” Flood says, “but I’m very hopeful this fellow will do the business for us this year. We have a few nice young ones, but there’s not point talking about them until they prove themselves. There is no point cutting your cloth until you have it measured.”
Francis Flood has long been – and continues to be – a racing legend and if GVA Ireland were to come up trumps this year, that fact will only have been underlined one more time.
