A six-pack will have to do
I’m locked and loaded and ready to stake €50 each afternoon for the next four days, any profits going towards funding a trip to the off-licence on Friday evening – erm, I mean going towards a worthwhile charity.
What you don’t know is that I took an executive decision regarding Ruby Tuesday.
Yes, of course it’s a lot of bookmaker hype contrived to lure in ingenuous punters. All four of the Mullins hotpots will have to stand up, all four will have to get the run of their races and it’s a safe bet at least one event this week will be won by the Closutton outsider rather than by the Closutton favourite.
Still, it’s Willie and Ruby we’re talking about here, perhaps the most well balanced double act since Fred and Ginger, so just to be on the safe side I do the four-timer and the four trebles.
Mention of Closutton outsiders brings me neatly to Shaneshill in the opener. He’s a nice price, he finished second in the bumper last year — ergo he likes the place — and I’ve long had a thing about backing the Irish second-favourite in this race. No messing, then; I give it both barrels. A tenner each way on Shaneshill at 11/1.
To maintain an interest through the afternoon I speculate €15 on an each-way Lucky 15. Josses Hill, who was placed in the opener last year; Ned Stark because I’m a fan of Game of Thrones (the TV series, not the books); Cause of Causes, who clobbered the final fence on the Thursday in 2014 when in the process of delivering what looked like a winning challenge; and Little Jon, who a couple of previewers have mentioned as a live outsider, in the last.
...And they’re off!!!
And, what’s more, we’re off too, off to a tús maith. Shaneshill runs a fine race to be second in the novice hurdle and Josses Hill stays on well to be third in the Arkle.
Even better, the two races are won respectively by Douvan, clearly the classiest horse, and Un De Sceaux, who’s poised and mature and doesn’t try to race his opponents into submission or take each fence as a personal insult.
It may not be half the battle but already the meeting is more of a success for me than last year’s was. I’m halfway to the Ruby Tuesday four-timer and left to muse that perhaps the real genius of Willie and Ruby is that they make having, and winning with, the best horse look so simple when it never is.
In the handicap chase Ned Stark finishes down the field but at least — Game of Thrones in-joke ahoy! — he finishes in one piece, head intact.
The Champion Hurdle is less a race and more of a triumphal procession; Faugheen slaughters the field and I’m three quarters of the way to Ruby Tuesday. Also, the contest for the much coveted title of Greatest Living Kilkennyman is over.
It’s WP Mullins by a furlong. Brian who? Henry who?
I head to the bookies to watch the Mares’ Hurdle. I’m not exactly counting my winnings as they turn to the last but I am, as the saying goes, on good terms with myself as Annie Power opens her shoulders. And then... Urgh.
Mind you, I could be the young lad beside me. He claims he had €100 on the four-timer.
That Cause of Causes obliges in the 4.40pm to bring up a poxy 50-cent place double is of utterly no consolation.
Four winners on the opening day: my trip to the off-licence should be taking place not on Friday but now, and not for a six-pack but for some Veuve bloody Clicquot.
Oh Annie. I’m not your daddy and you will never now be my daughter. What a shame.
* Running total after Day One: €78.50
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