A Mug's Game: It'll be all downhill from here

A good start to the week indeed for our man Enda McEvoy.

Danny Mullins on Kargese comes home to win. Pic: Morgan Treacy/Inpho

A good start to the week. Turns out I have a free fiver on the opener. Leader D’allier being a non-runner for the Mullins/Townend combo I switch to Willie’s next candidate Mighty Park. 

He’s 13/2, a rather more generous price than the trainer’s fancied horses usually are.

The good start does not prove to be  leath na hoibre. Mighty Park is well placed going down the hill but backpedals once the temperature is turned up and finishes ninth. 

“He was running with the choke out,” Mick Fitzgerald asserts. Old Park Star, the 15/8 favourite, leads home a British clean sweep. The nearest Irish horse is fifth.

All manner of questions present themselves. Given that the ground is drying, is a formbook compiled over the soggy months of the wettest winter in aeons about to be flung out the window? Is the pendulum poised to swing back towards the home team (last year it finished 20-8 to the visitors), and, if so, to what extent? Are the Mullins horses firing?

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The answer to that last question materialises 40 minutes later. Happily for Willie and, more importantly, happily for me, they are.

Lulamba and Kopek Des Bordes are the market leaders for the Arkle. The latter - Kopek Des Bordes, not Arkle - is a festival winner, always a valid reference point, but so too is his stablemate Kargese, who claimed the County Hurdle 12 months ago. And Kargese is 7/1 rather than 11/8 and has Danny Mullins aboard.

Also, your columnist interviewed Danny for the Irish Racing Yearbook in 2024 and found him a joy: engaging and thoughtful and as happy to chat about his passion for Formula One as to expound on his theory as to why novices can be a solid punt in handicap chases (the handicapper hasn’t got to them yet). 

A lot of horsey people can talk and think of nothing but horses; Danny possessed bandwidth.

Also, Ruby Walsh takes that lovingly honed scalpel of his to Kopek de Bordes’s jumping in his pre-race analysis and finds fault with the way he gets his hind end down when landing. I am duly heartened.

To cut to the, ahem, chase: a fiver on Kargese at 7/1 it is.

To do some more cutting: Kargese wins after Kopek makes a mistake at the last. Danny is delighted. Willie is delighted and presumably considerably reassured. I am delighted.

Danny has dictated the pace without going too fast and kicked on off the home turn. “I was just trying to use my jumping as my strongest asset,” he reveals. “I hadn’t burned the petrol early.” Mick deems it a “very very good ride”. 

Alice Plunkett deems it a “brilliant ride”.

I have Kargese as the first leg of an each-way Lucky 15. We’re up and running twice.

In an effort to get down with the kids, ITV chat to a blonde with a lavishly tattooed left arm and a chap who looks like an ageing version of someone out of Westlife. 

They are, respectively, GK Barry, “a social media influencer”, and Calfreezy, a YouTuber. No, ITV. Just no.

Saratoga wins the 2.40 in green and yellow hoops. It is JP McManus’s birthday. Matt Chapman swoops and sings to him. Poor JP. This is what’s known as an unbirthday present.

On to the Champion Hurdle. The tale is quickly told. Lossiemouth slaughters ‘em. It is her fourth win at as many festivals. Willie’s horses are firing alright.

Among the field for the 4.40 is Downmexicoway. Doubtless Tony Soprano will have backed him; his uncle, who was famously fond of venturing south of the border, perhaps not so much.

I’m tempted but instead, having attended enough matches there over the years, I have a couple of euro each way on O’Moore Park at 22/1.

Downmexicoway comes fourth. O’Moore Park is, like Mighty Park, running with the choke out before staying on up the hill. Is he fifth? Do I get my place money? He is sixth, done for fifth by a nose, and I do not. Ah well.

The day isn’t over yet. Winston Junior’s second place to Saratoga means I’m relying on Iceberg Theory in the last to bring up three legs of the Lucky 15. Although beaten a long way out he plugs on valiantly for fifth, the excellent animal, and the €15 invested becomes €27.42.

A good start to the week indeed. Relax: it’ll be downhill from here.

· Kitty after Day One: €82.42