A Mug's Game: The only way is down after unusually strong start to the week
Racegoers watch Lark In The Mornin ridden by JJ Slevin coming home to win the Boodles Juvenile Handicap Hurdle. Pic: Mike Egerton/PA Wire.
As the University Challenger presenter likes to announce at the start of the show, you’re too familiar with the rules and regulations for them to be stated yet again. (Okay. Four days, €50 a day to speculate and let’s see will it be champagne or Clonmel chardonnay come Friday evening. Or water.) This year there’s a caveat, the same one that’s been ventilated all over the place. It’s hard to get bulled up about Cheltenham 2024. It is not the festival of old, or even the festival of 10 years ago.
Too many small fields. Too many short or odds-on favourites. Little chance of a nice 8/1 or 10/1 winner. Negligible chance of an even nicer long-odds each-way acca coming in.
The gods of racing are firmly on the side of the big battalions. We are not going to get a Welsh farmer saddling the 100/1 winner of the Gold Cup, or indeed of any other race at the festival.
Still, none of the above precludes us admiring the training genius of WP Mullins. So we beat on, boats against the current. And hey, it turns out that we can profit from the aforementioned genius of WP Mullins too because Bet365 are offering State Man, 4/11 everywhere else, at evens.
Look, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. Let us not look a gift gelding in the mouth. Half of our €50 on the nose it is.
State Man gets the job done and gets it done competently. He doesn’t slaughter his opponents and Paul Townend doesn’t show off on him. It is snug and that’s all it has to be. Why win by 10 lengths when you can win by one and a quarter?
The post-race interview with Willie is enlightening for what it reveals about the trainer-jockey dynamic. Willie announces that he was “amazed” at the way Paul rode State Man. “I thought he’d be much more forward. He just rode him with supreme confidence.” And instead of blinding him with instructions Willie, in turn, has supreme confidence in Paul. Fascinating.
Right, let’s go back in time to a text despatched on Monday evening to my anonymous Glanbia/WLR FM source in the charming seaside town of Dungarvan. Said source – it’s Kieran O’Connor, of course – was in with Henry De Bromhead for his radio show a couple of weeks ago. Was De Bromhead sweet on anything?
“Slade Steel. Quilixios. Telmesomethinggirl.” They’re duly inserted into a small each-way trixie and to get proceedings underway a fiver goes on Slade Steel at 4/1 in the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle. The Deise representative is prominent throughout but is headed by Mystical Power approaching the last. Rachael Blackmore isn’t taking no for an answer, however, and halfway up the run-in she wrests back the initiative. We’re off to a flier.
Unfortunately Quilixios is left at the start in the Arkle and barely runs a race. Fortunately Telmesomethinggirl does run a race in the Mares’ Hurdle and, sent off at 22/1, chases home Lossiemouth. The trixie thus yields a small profit.
Oh yes, Lossiemouth. I’m not going to back her at 8/13 (obviously), which doesn’t mean I can’t put her in a €10 double with Embassy Gardens, the Mullins hotpot in the last.
The great man’s son Patrick, riding in the race named after his beloved granny, bides his time before challenging around the home turn, only to make a mistake at the second-last. Bah. Not that it would have mattered in the end as there’s no catching Corbetts Cross, trained by his cousin Emmet, who streaks home. Ah well.
The good news? I finish well up for the day nonetheless. (What a glorious festival Cheltenham is! Who ever said it had lost its lustre?!) The bad news? This unforeseen development leaves me discombobulated rather than joyous.
Regular readers may hazily recall that your correspondent’s first two days at Cheltenham invariably go badly before he recovers – more through luck than judgment, it needs scarcely be added – on the Thursday and Friday.
This year it’s the other way around and I end the afternoon well ahead yet fearing the worst. Surely, to paraphrase Yazz, the only way is down.
