Wednesday learnings: False starts no longer a source of amusement
Irish jockey Declan Queally said he was abused by Nico de Boinville before the start of the Turner's Novices Hurdle on Day 2 at Cheltenham. Pics: ITV
And in fairness, so is the present and the past too. His 116th festival win came in the first race, the Turners Novice Hurdle when King Rasko Grey provided his owners, Audrey and Greg Turley with lucrative compensation for Galoin Des Champs missing the Gold Cup on Friday.
Willie was surprised that his progressive six-year-old was allowed to start at 11/1 given his lofty opinion of the horse and the improvement he’d been showing at home following his defeat in a messy contest at the DRF.
Forty minutes later he won the Brown Advisory Novice chase with Kitzbuhel who was spring-heeled all through and showed courage and determination to hold off his better-fancied stablemate Final Demand up the hill.
Kitzbuhel earned a 20/1 ante-post quote for next years Gold Cup and his successful rider, Harry Cobden, sounded excited by his potential after the race when he said “He was brilliant today, he was very brave.
He was lugging right the whole way and that was why I just kept him down the middle. I had to switch in down the hill, as I wanted to make them come round me. He was so brave – everywhere I asked him, he delivered. Credit to the horse, he is very, very tough.”
The inability of the starter to get them off first time and in a straight line at the festival was once a source of amusement.
Now it’s just grown frustrating and tedious for jockeys and spectators alike. The start of the Turners was possibly his most inept performance yet.
They were all at the post and ready to go at the start time of 1.20 but it took a whole four minutes before they were sent on their way, four minutes that nearly started an international dispute and an exchange of strongly worded diplomatic exchanges.
The problem started when Nico De Boinville on Act of Innocence and Declan Queally on I’ll Sort That both decided that they fancied starting from exactly the same position close to the tape and neither of them was inclined to say, ‘after you, Sir’.
Words were exchanged and Queally was steaming when he returned to the weigh room, remarking that he was “being abused by an English rider Nico de Boinville and it’s not very nice. I’m an amateur coming here riding in front of my kids and that, it’s horrific".
De Boinville suggested that Queally should “look in the mirror”.
He needs to tread carefully. Queally is a man of West Waterford, a hurler and probably has some blood of the Déise, a feared warrior tribe from a thousand years ago.
Not the kind of man to take a backward step.
National Hunt racing is called ‘jumping’ for a reason.
Majborough was thought by many to be the banker of the week and many others as the ‘lay’ of the festival because there was no way he was going to survive 13 fences at the speed needed to win the Champion Chase without taking a couple of fences with him along the way.
The ‘lay him’ tendency were proved to be correct.
He had jumped impeccably for the addition of cheekpieces to beat Marine Nationale nineteen lengths at the DRF, but that was on softer ground at a gentler pace.
Yesterday’s race was different gravy. He raced enthusiastically from the front, but mistakes began to creep in from five out and he nearly uprooted the third last.
His stablemate Il Est Temps was quietly ridden by Paul Townend and eased into the race from two out, but he too needed to survive a blunder at the last before sealing the win.
