Up and running nicely despite my Annie Power failure
Fifty quid to speculate each day for four days, with any profits going to a stay of indeterminate duration in the Kilkenny Home for the Terminally Short of Cash.
But let me make the day’s gospel clear from the start: as one of the thousands stung by Annie Power last year, I am not trying any of that Ruby Tuesday nonsense this time around.
Yes, it’s Ruby. Yes, it’s WP. Yes, it’s the same four races. But it’s a different year and they’re different favourites and two of them are not the same horses at all.
Getting stuck into the four-timer is precisely what the bookies want. Real mug punter stuff. Tantamount to self-induced entrapment. Include me out.
Besides, I’d present Match of the Day in my underpants before I’d back a horse called Min. I mean, Min? Come on; Min is a name for a spinster aunt, perhaps even a kindly grand-aunt. Or possibly a cat. It is no name for a Cheltenham winner.
Also, and apropos of Annie Power, not only did she sting me last year in the mares hurdle, she stung me the year before in the World Hurdle. Fool me thrice? No chance.
So I content myself with a €20 double on Douvan and Vroum Vroum Mag. Half a Ruby Tuesday. That’ll do me.
I note with interest and encouragement that Pat Keane on these pages has given the nod to Silver Concorde in the opener. This animal is a festival winner, he’s trained by racing’s renaissance man Dermot Weld and the ground is drying. Sounds good to me.
On which point, after a winter in which runners were up to their hocks in it, the change of going surely means the formbook — or a number of pages thereof, anyway — will be heading out the window over the course of the coming days.
Elsewhere, I venture a 50 cent each-way Lucky 15 consisting of Sempre Medici (the Mullins outsider) in the Champion Hurdle, Un Temps Pour Tout in the big handicap chase (David Pipe and Tom Scudamore always constitute a combination to be respected), Katgary (who I have vague memories of being placed for me a couple of festivals ago) and Ballychorus, trained by another Mullins.
After watching Monday night’s wonderful RTÉ documentary on Paddy Mullins, I clearly have Mullinses on the brain.
Finally, for ageing Pogues fans like myself, there can only be one choice in the 4.50pm: a fiver each way on Measureofmydreams. WP Mullins. Katie Walsh. A Shane McGowan lyric. What a divine conjunction. It seems like only last year I wandered into Sherwood’s of High Street one summer afternoon to purchase Rum, Sodomy and the Lash.
Actually, chillingly, it’s coming up on 30 summers ago, and Sherwood’s are now gone from High Street and out on one of the industrial estates. McGowan is still alive, mind, and quite possibly always will be. (And yes, I know Measureofmydreams is not a line from Rum, Sodomy etc)
“And they’re off!”
Sure enough, my doubts about Min are justified. Unfortunately and simultaneously my hopes for Silver Concorde are dashed; he’s the first horse beaten. But the advance hype for Douvan — “like a different species,” according to his trainer — is justified and he hacks up.
I’d happily take a piece of the 7/1 instantly offered about him for next year’s Gold Cup were it not so ludicrously far away.
Matters take a further turn for the better when Un Temps Pour Tout, who’s always in the firing line, stays on well to win the handicap chase. Two winners out of three. Problem is, they’re in different bets. I’ll need more than this.
Annie Power. Hmm. Badly wrong there, wasn’t I?
To make it worse, Sempre Medici barely raises a gallop. Still, Vroum Vroum Mag lives up to her name and does what Annie Power couldn’t do last year in the mares hurdle. My half a Ruby Tuesday sluices up.
It nearly gets even better in the 4.50pm except Katie, after giving Measureofmydreams a peach of a ride, finds two too good for her up the hill.
I’ll get my place money; it wasn’t a bottle of smoke. Finally, Katgary unseats in the last, meaning I’ll make a small profit, nothing more, on the Lucky 15.
So that’s it for the first day. Cheltenham may be a marathon rather than a sprint, but at least I’m off to a decent start.
No rain in Soho tonight.
