Rumour mill found to be baseless, but Meade’s ill–fortune at Cheltenham continues unabated
And, when things are going badly, there’s noting like an Irish rumour machine to further inflame the delicate sensibilities of the Irish betting public.
Noel Meade’s progressive Aran Concerto was a well-backed favourite for the Ballymore Properties Novices’ Hurdle coming into the festival, but throughout Tuesday night and yesterday morning the six-year-old was the subject of many wild rumours about his well-being.
Despite this era of high-tech communications – not to mention the ubiquitous mobile phone and its texting facility – Meade remained blissfully unaware on Tuesday night of the furore surrounding the well-being of his horse.
‘He travelled over badly,’ the story went and ‘hadn’t eaten up’ on arrival in Cheltenham.
By yesterday morning the story doing the rounds was hotter than a bush fire; the horse was fretting by being away from home and was sweating up. He mightn’t even run, some finally concluded.
By the time poor Meade arrived at the track for racing the horse was apparently all but on his way to the knackers’ yard and the trainer was left to try and repair the damage before Aran Concerto ran in the first race.
The fact that Meade, more than practically other trainer in the history of racing here, has had a particularly unlucky time of it at Cheltenham, only added fuel to the flames he was trying to beat out.
That the horse eventually finished a poor fifth under Tony McCoy only heightened his frustration because no matter what he said afterwards by way of explanation, it only served to confirm the feeling among the public that something had, after all, been amiss.
Although this was patently not the case, the trainer was pretty much at a loss to explain what had gone wrong.
Expressing the widely felt fact that the horse’s performance was “very disappointing” the Co. Meath handler, who has after all amassed €€1.7m in prizemoney this season to lead the trainers’ table in Ireland, was left in an invidious position.
As much as he denied the rumour mill the more it gained pace and then when his horse failed to spark he was left to try and quell the avalanche of those saying ‘I told you so.’
There are few more approachable or nicer men in racing, but over the years his record at Cheltenham has been made ever more painful by dint of bad luck or other circumstances outside his control.
Yesterday he was once again left mystified the performance of a horse and, in truth, you could only feel sorry for him. Earlier this season he had described Aran Concerto as potentially the best horse he’d ever trained, but the horse let him down.
The earlier rumour mill had been pretty baseless, but he was left looking slightly silly in the heel of the hunt as his horse’s inexperience told.
Tony McCoy described Aran Concerto’s run as “babyish” and he said the horse never settled. That was the simple be-all and end-all of it.
For the rumour mongers, however, their actions had been justified – no matter how little truth or even factual content there had been to them.
